Bridging the Analytical Continental Divide

Bridging the Analytical Continental Divide

A Companion to Contemporary Western Philosophy

Edited by

Tiziana Andina

LEIDEN | BOSTON

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Filosofia contemporanea. EnglishBridging the analytical continental divide : a companion to contemporary western philosophy / edited by Tiziana Andina.pages cmIncludes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 978-90-04-25496-1 (hardback : alk. paper)ISBN 978-90-04-26934-7 (e-book)1.Philosophy, Modern20th century.I.Andina, Tiziana, editor of compilation.II.Title.

B804.F459713 2014190dc23 2013050607

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To our schoolmasters for the world that they left usTo our students for the world which they will build

Contents

PrefaceixList of Contributorsxi

Introduction1Maurizio Ferraris

1 The Death and Resurrection of Philosophy12 Philosophy in Postmodern Times13 The Old SynthesisRelativism44 The Analytics Land on the Continent55 The New Synthesis: Realism6

1 Metaphisycs and Ontology8Tiziana Andina and Andrea Borghini

1.1 The Beginnings81.2 Things that Exist231.3 Regional Ontologies29

2 Epistemology38Maria Cristina Amoretti and Annalisa Coliva

2.1 The Traditional Definition of Knowledge382.2 Justification and Knowledge452.3 Scepticism and the External World522.4 Epistemic Relativism58

3 Language65Carola Barbero and Stefano Caputo

3.1 The Dominant Paradigm653.2 Beyond the Dominant Paradigm76

4 Logic and Mathematics108Andrea Pedeferri and Francesco Berto

4.1 Philosophy of Logic and Logical Philosophy1084.2 Theories of Truth1154.3 Model Theory1214.4 Modal Logic and Possible Worlds1274.5 Conditionals137

5 Mind145Luca Angelone and Daniela Tagliafico

5.1 The Problem of Consciousness1475.2 The Extended Mind1635.3 The Sensorimotor Paradigm171

viii contents

6 Science177Elena Casetta and Giuliano Torrengo

6.1 Philosophy of General Science1776.2 The Philosophy of Special Sciences194

7 Ethics206Francesca De Vecchi, Sergio Filippo Magni and Vera Tripodi

7.1 The Discussion on the Foundations of Ethics2067.2 Acting in the Social World2187.3 Sex and Gender, the Individual Beyond the Limits of Classification230

8 Politics241Valeria Ottonelli and Italo Testa

8.1 Power and Democratic Legitimacy2428.2 Recognition and Oppression2488.3 Body Politics2548.4 Distributive Justice2598.5 Human Rights, Global Justice, Immigration263

9 Aesthetics270Alessandro Arbo and Chiara Cappelletto

9.1 Art, Perception, Beauty2709.2 Neuroaesthetics2759.3 Difficulties of Aesthetic Judgment2849.4 Image and Reality: An Ancient Competition2909.5 Work/Works294

Bibliography299Index343

Preface1

A teacher of mine once noted that it is not possible to historicize the present for one simple reasonhistorical knowledge exhibits different characteristics than scientific knowledge, since one of the elements that distinguishes historical knowledge is its dependence on the future (Danto 1965). It would only be possible to historicize the salient events of a specific historical periodsay, the set of events known in the news as the Arab Springif the epigones of those happenings could observe them from their own time; that is, from the future. They would not only be able to re-examine them, by carefully studying the appropriate sources and considering, for example, the happenings that compelled certain populations to rebel against oppressive institu-tions which were detrimental to fundamental human rights, but they would also be able to tie those events to the more or less evident consequences they generated.

In other words, only from the future would it truly be possible to historicize our present, not because objective historical knowledge is not possibleaccording to Maurizio Ferraris (2001, 2012), it is of no use to confuse epistemology (our understand-ing of things and events) and ontology (things and events)but simply because the facts that we take into consideration can involve consequences even in the distant future and the very analysis of those consequences would be decisive in formulating historical knowledge.

These facts exist precisely as the subject who wishes to understand them exists, as well as the world that hosts both. Nevertheless, there exists a space between subject and world and it is in this very space, which is by no means residual, that the role of philosophy is situated. It is a role that can find its origin in the study of bizarre and borderline cases and from the analysis of common sense that sets the backdrop for consolidated practices.

With all of this in mind, we have written a book that has little to nothing to do with the history of philosophy in the twofold sense that it does not seek to historicize con-temporary philosophy and that it is not concerned with the work carried out by histo-rians of philosophy. Instead, we have attempted to reconstruct the state of the art of debate with regards to some of the areas in which, over the past decades, philosophical research has been active and fruitful. From this perspective, as previously mentioned, the reason for philosophical reflection is the logical and conceptual space in which the relationships between the subject and the world, on the one hand, and between the subjects among themselves, on the other, are articulated. Here, human beings articu-late representations of themselves and of the world in which they interactthey invent languages that allow for those representations to be shared and manipulated

1 Julia Heim has translated this chapter into English.

x preface

and they imagine possible worlds and an extensive series of counterfactuals in order to put them to the test. And then, seeing as though they know themselves to be the actors and partially even the authors of the scene within which they operate, they reflect upon themselves and on the peculiarities (or properties) that distinguish them insofar as human beings. They also reflect upon their way of navigating the world, on the objects that they encounter and that are there independently of them, as well as on the other objects that do depend on them, and on the nature of the relationships that tie them to the world and to each other.

Understood as such, the task that philosophy must carry out concerns at least two realms. On the one hand, there is conceptual clarification which is exceedingly neces-sary in order to refine our arguments, our comprehension of reality and, hopefully, our actions. On the other hand, there is what regards the construction of systematic and articulate visions of human space which are able to sustain us in our effort to create meaning, and which we are summoned to make both in our private lives and the ethi-cal and public dimensions. One realm would be incomplete without the other, and both are necessary in order to determine our identity as individuals who, together, are the product and a part of Western culture.

That being said, I would like to make a few remarks about the structure of the vol-ume, and to express my gratitude to certain individuals.

This work has two fundamental characteristics: it is a work of multiple handsto be exact, each chapter has been written by at least two authorsand it has been writ-ten by young philosophers, many of whom are part of what is known today as the brain drain, wherein people working in universities around the world bring with them an image of an Italy that, despite everything, has produced excellent scholars. Alongside them are other young scholars who have the fortune of working in Italian universities, often in difficult contexts, and who, just as the former, go abroad when it is necessary. I would like to thank both parties for the passion, expertise and enthusi-asm which they have dedicated to the small community that was our work group. Typically, in groups that work harmoniously, each unit performs its own function and its own task. In this way, the group becomes a plural subject, a new entity that is able to pinpoint objectives that, if it were to operate alone, its components would fail to fulfill. Our objective has been to provide students, scholars and readers of philosophy with certain instruments and ideas that are necessary for understanding the contem-porary philosophical debate.

List of Contributors

Maria Cristina Amoretti(www.dif.unige.it/epi/hp/amoretti/) is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Genoa where she also lectured the postgraduate course of Methodology of human sciences. She was Visiting Research Fellow at Kings College, London. Her main areas of specialization are epistemology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of science. She has written several articles and chapters, both in Italian and English. Among her books, she has authored La mente fuori dal corpo, FrancoAngeli, 2011 and Il triangolo dellinterpretazione, FrancoAngeli, 2008, co-authored Piccolo trattato di epistemologia, Codice Edizioni, 2010, edited Natura umana, natura artificiale, FrancoAngeli, 2010, and co-edited Reason and Rationality, Ontos, 2012, Triangulation, Ontos 2011, and Knowledge, Language, and Interpretation, Ontos, 2008. At present (20122014) she is Vice President of the Italian Society for Analytic Philosophy (SIFA).

Tiziana Andina(editor; www.labont.it/andina) is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Turin, Italy. She has been a fellow of Columbia University (New York, USA). She is the author of many articles on national and internationals journals in different topics of philosophy and philosophy of art. Her publications include: Il volto Americano di Nietzsche, La Citta del Sole, 1999; Il problema della percezione nella filosofia di Nietzsche, AlboVersorio, 2005; Percezione e rappresentazione. Alcune ipotesi tra Gombrich e Arnheim, Aesthetica Preprint, 2005; Confinisfumati. I problemi dellarte, le soluzioni della percezione, Mimesis, 2009; Arthur Danto: Philosopher of Pop, Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2011, and The Philosophy of Art: The Question of Definition. From Hegel to Post-Dantian Theories, Bloomsbury Academy 2013.

Luca Angelonehas a PhD in Philosophy. He is a member of the Laboratory for Ontology at the University of Turin and is part of the research group Experience and Reason at the University of Fribourg. His research focuses its attention on various aspects of phenomenal consciousness connecting philosophy of mind with metaphysical and ethical questions.

xii list of contributors

Alessandro Arbois matre de confrences (Associate Professor) in the Music Department of the University of Strasbourg (F). The author of essays and books on the philosophy of music (especially in the twentieth century), he edited, among other things, Le corps lectrique: voyage dans le son de Fausto Romitelli (Paris, 2005), Perspectives de lesthtique musicale: entre thorie et histoire (Paris, 2007), and Wittgenstein and Aesthetics: Perspectives and Debates (with M. Le Du and S. Plaud, Frankfurt, 2012). More recently he published Archologie de lcoute. Essais desthtique musicale (Paris, 2010) and Entendre comme. Wittgenstein et lesthtique musicale (Paris, 2013).

Carola Barberois Assistant Professor in philosophy of language at the University of Turin. Her areas of competence and specialization are philosophy of language, ontology and metaphysics of fictional entities, philosophy of literature and theory of emotions. She received her PhD from the University of Eastern Piedmont with a dissertation On the Existence of Fictional Entities as Higher Order Objects (supervisors: M. Ferraris, A. Voltolini, F. Kroon and P. Simons). In 2009 Barbero won the prestigious prize New Aesthetics conferred by the Italian Society for Aesthetics and in 1999 she was honored with the prize Optime to the best graduates of the University of Turin. She is on the advisory board of two important Italian philosophical journals, the Rivista di Estetica and Iride. She has published many books and articles on different topics in philosophy of language and ontology of fictional entities (a selection: Madame Bovary: Something Like a Melody, AlboVersorio, 2005; Genuine and Rational Tears Theoria, 2, 2010, 518); Madame Bovary as a Higher Order Object, in A. Bottani and R. Davies (eds.), Modes of Existence, Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers (2006, 173190), and; Cry for a Shadow, in V. Raspa (ed.), Meinong Studies / Meinong Studien, vol. II, Frankfurt am Main, Ontos-Verlag, 2006, 181213. She participates as speaker and discussant to international and national philosophical conferences.

Francesco Bertois senior lecturer at the University of Aberdeen UK and a member of Crispin Wrights Northern Institute of Philosophy. He has been a fellow of the Universities of Padua, Venice, Vienna, the Sorbonne-Ecole Normale Suprieure of Paris, and the Institute for Advanced Study at Notre Dame University (IN). He has published books in logic and ontology for Blackwell, College publications, Synthse Library, and papers for Philosophical Studies, Philosophical Quarterly, Philosophia Mathematica, Dialectica, Australasian

xiiilist of contributors

Journal of Philosophy, European Journal of Philosophy, American Philosophical Quarterly, Logique et Analyse, The Logica Yearbook, New Waves in Philosophical Logic and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Andrea Borghini(PhD Columbia University, 2007; http://college.holycross.edu/faculty/aborghin/) is Associate Professor in the Philosophy Department at the College of the Holy Cross and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, Italy. His research focuses on metaphysics, the philosophy of biology, and the philosophy of food. He has authored over thirty scholarly articles and three books with Carocci Editore, respectively on theories of possibility, on the philosophy of Saul Kripke (with C. Hughes, M. Santambrogio and A. C. Varzi) and on the philosophy of biology (with E. Casetta). A fourth book on the philosophy of David K. Lewis is under contract. He is currently at work on a book-length manuscript on the philoso-phy of food.

Chiara Cappellettois Assistant Professor of Aesthetics in Philosophy M.A. at the University of Milan. She is an associated member at the CRAL-EHESS, Paris. She has taken part in several national and international conferences on visual culture, aesthetics of theatre and neuroaesthetics. Among her main publications are: Neuroestetica. Larte del cervello, (Laterza, Roma-Bari 2009, 2nd ed. 2012) and Il rito delle pulci. Wittgenstein morfologo, (Il Castoro, 2004), awarded with the IX Philosophy Award Castiglioncello, Young scholars section. Among her more recent essays are: Aesthetics as Methodology in Ludwig Wittgensteins Thought: The Operational Character of Family Resemblances in A. Arbo, M. Le Du, S. Plaud (eds.), Wittgenstein and Aesthetics: Perspectives and Debates, (Ontos Verlag, 2012, 2543); The puppets paradox: An organic prosthesis, RES: Journal of Anthropology and Aesthetics 59/60 (2011): 325336; La natura finzionale dellimmagine nel confronto con le neuroscienze, PsicoArt. Rivista on-line di arte e psicologia 1 (2011), and Bill Viola ou limage sans representation, Images Re-vues 8 (2011; http://imagesrevues.revues.org/497). She has been a member of the Societ Italiana di Estetica since 2003, and has participated in several national and international research projects.

Stefano Caputois Assistant Professor in philosophy of language at the University of Sassari. His areas of competence and specialization are philosophy of language, metaphysics, theories of truth, grounding, paradox of analysis and truth

xiv list of contributors

relativism. He had a PhD from the University of Eastern Piedmont with a dissertation on Truthmakers (supervisors: D. Marconi, K. Mulligan, M. Santambrogio and G. Soldati). In 2009 he won a two-year research grant at the University of Sassari. Caputo has relevant publications on the topics of truth and metaphysics (a selection: Fattori di verit, Edizioni AlboVersorio, 2005; Three Dilemmas for Alethic Functionalism, Philosophical Quarterly [2012]; The Dependence of Truth on Being: Is there a Problem for Minimalism? In Schnieder M. B., Steinberg A., (eds.), Dependence (= Basic Philosophical Concepts), [Philosophia Verlag 2013]; La verit nel XXI secolo, in Carrara M., Morato V. (eds.), Bollettino della Societ italiana di filosofia analitica, [Mimesis, 2011]; Truth-making: what it is not and what it could be, in Monnoyer J. M. (ed.) Metaphysics and Truthmakers, [Ontos Verlag, 2007]; Frege e Husserl: due ontologie del significato, [Rivista di Estetica, 2001]). He participates as speaker and discussant at several international philosophical conferences.

Elena Casettais a Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy of Science of the Faculty of Science of the University of Lisbon. She has been a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Turin (Italy), where she is member of the Laboratory for Ontology. She has been Visiting Scholar at Columbia University, Visiting Post-doctoral Fellow at IHPST (Institut dHistoire et de Philosophie des Sciences et des Techniques), CNRS/Paris 1/ENS, Paris, and Fellow at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America. Her areas of specialization are Philosophy of Biology, Analytic Ontology and Metaphysics. She has authored around twenty articles and book chapters in English and Italian as well as the volumes La sfida delle chimere. Realismo, pluralismo e convenzionalismo in filosofia della biologia, (Mimesis, 2009) and, with Andrea Borghini, Filosofia della biologia (Carocci, 2013).

Annalisa Colivais Associate Professor at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, and associate director of COGITO Research Centre in Philosophy. A former Fulbright and Alexander von Humboldt Fellow, as well as a Fellow of the Italian Academy at Columbia University in the City of New York, she is among the organizers of the 2013 Wittgenstein Symposium in Kirchberg am Wechsel (Austria). A member of the editorial board of several journals (Thought, Disputatio, Philosophical Inquiries, Iride), her main publications include, as editor, The Self and Self-Knowledge, (OUP, 2012), Mind, Meaning and

xvlist of contributors

Knowledge. Themes from the Philosophy of Crispin Wright, (OUP, 2012), and Skepticism and Justification (a special issue of Synthese), Filosofia analitica. Temi e problemi, (Carocci, 2007). Besides about forty papers published in Italian and English, she is the author of several monographs such as Moore and Wittgenstein. Scepticism, Certainty and Common Sense, (Palgrave, 2010), Scetticismo. Dubbio, paradosso e conoscenza, (Laterza, 2012) and I modi del relativismo, (Laterza, 2009).

Francesca De Vecchiis Assistant Professor in Theoretical Philosophy at the Philosophy Faculty of the University Vita-Salute San Raffaele, Milan, where she teaches social ontology. She is author and editor of many works of social ontology, among which are: Culpabilit et rtribution. Essais de philosophie pnale (Schwabe, 2011), Making the Social World. Social Ontology, Collective Intentionality and Normativity (in Phenomenology and Mind, 2/2012, www.phenomenolgy andmind.eu), Eidetica del diritto e ontologia sociale. Il realismo di Adolf Reinach (Mimesis, 2012), Ontological Dependence and Essential Laws of Social Reality: the Case of Promising (in Social Ontology, Springer 2013), Three Types of Heterotropic Intentionality. A Taxonomy in Social Ontology (in Institutions, Emotions, and Groups Agents. Contributions to Social Ontology, Springer, 2014). She is a member of PERSONA, the Research Centre in Phenomenology and Sciences of the Person (www.phenomenologylab.eu) and of the European Network on Social Ontology.

Maurizio Ferrarisis full professor of Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy and Education of the University of Turin, where he is the director of the LabOnt (Laboratory for Ontology), and fellow of Kte Hamburger Kolleg Recht als Kultur (Bonn) and Honorary Fellow of the Center for Advanced StudiesSouth East Europe (Rijeka). He is a columnist for La Repubblica, the director of Rivista di Estetica and the co-director of Critique and the Revue franco-phone desthtique. He is a fellow of the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America and of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung, the Directeur dtudes of the Collge International de Philosophie and a visiting professor at the cole des Hautes tudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, as well as other European and American universities. He has written about fifty books that have been translated into several languages, including History of Hermeneutics (Humanities Press, 1996), Documentality or Why it is Necessary to Leave Traces (Fordham UP 2012) and Goodbye Kant! (SUNY UP 2013). His

xvi list of contributors

latest books to be published in English are Where Are You? An Ontology of the Cell Phone (Fordham UP 2014) and Manifesto of New Realism (SUNY UP 2014).

Sergio Filippo Magniis Assistant Professor in Moral Philosophy at the Department of Humanities, University of Pavia (Italy), where he teaches Bioethics and History of Philosophy. Among his publications are: Teorie della libert. La discussione contemporanea, (Carocci, 2005); Etica delle capacit. La filosofia pratica di Sen e Nussbaum, (Il Mulino, 2006); Il relativismo etico. Analisi e teorie nel pensiero contemporaneo, (Il Mulino, 2010); Bioetica, (Carocci, 2011).

Valeria Ottonelliis Assistant Professor in Political Philosophy at the University of Genova. Her main research interests are the normative theory of democracy and the theory of justice in migration. She is author of Dilemmi politici (with E. Biale and C. Testino), (De Ferrari, 2010), La libert delle donne, (Il Nuovo Melangolo, 2011), I principi procedurali della democrazia, (Il Mulino, 2012), and is the editor of an introductory collection of essays by John Rawls (Leggere Rawls, Il Mulino, 2010). Her works have appeared in Political Studies, The Journal of Political Philosophy, Critical Review of Social and Political Philosophy and Politics, Philosophy and Economics.

Andrea Pedeferriworks as a regular part time-faculty at George Washington University. He graduated from the University of Milan. He was a Fulbright research scholar at Columbia University. He specializes in logic, history of logic and philoso-phy of mathematics. He is currently working on second and higher order logic and logical pluralism.

Daniela Tagliaficohas a PhD in Philosophy of Language and is a member of the Laboratory for Ontology at the University of Turin. She is part of the editorial board of Rivista di Estetica and Inkoj. Philosophy and Artificial Languages. Her works mainly concern the fields of philosophy of mind and social ontology and she is the author of the book Pretense. A relativist account, (Mimesis, 2011). Her research presently focuses on the theories of the imagination and on a comparison between the construction of fictional and social reality.

xviilist of contributors

Italo Testais Assistant Professor at the University of Parma, where he teaches History of Political Philosophy. His research interests include German Classical Philosophy, Critical Theory, Social Ontology and Argumentation Theory, with a focus on the theory of recognition and its relation to social theory and deliberative democracy. He is author of La natura del riconoscimento, (Mimesis, 2010), Teorie dellargomentazione (with P. Cant) (Bruno Mondadori, 2006), Ragione impura (with R. Genovese) (Bruno Mondadori, 2006) and Hegel critico e scettico, (Il Poligrafo, 2002), and has edited a collection of essays of Th. W. Adorno, La crisi dellindividuo, (Reggio Emilia, 2010). Recent articles on social and political philosophy have appeared in Constellations, Philosophy and Social Criticism and Critical Horizons.

Giuliano Torrengois Assistant Professor at the University of Milan. He has been a post-doctoral fellow at Logos (University of Barcelona), and Labont (University of Turin). He obtained his PhD in philosophy of language at the University of Western Piedmont (Vercelli). As a visiting scholar he has spent one year at Columbia University in New York. He has published two books and many articles in many international journals, among which are Synthese, Analysis, Philosophia, Humana.mente and Rivista di Estetica.

Vera Tripodiis a Postdoctoral Fellow Research at the University of Turin, where she works on a project on gender categories and social kinds. She received her PhD in Logic and Epistemology from the University of Rome La Sapienza in 2007. Before taking up her post in Turin, she was a Post-doctoral Researcher with the Logos Group at the University of Barcelona. Before that, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow Research at STK (Centre for Gender Research) at the University of Oslo and a Visiting Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Columbia University in New York. She specializes in feminist philosophy, metaphysics of gender and philosophy of language. She also has research interests in gender biases and the underrepresentation of women in philosophy. Among her publications in English are Making Sense of Gender, Sex, Race and the Family (ed. with Elena Casetta) in Humana.Mente 22 (2012); New Perspectives on Quines Word and Object (ed. with Francesca Ervas), in Disputatio. International Journal of Philosophy IV (32) (2012).

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introduction

From Postmodernism to Realism1

Maurizio Ferraris

1 The Death and Resurrection of Philosophy

Those who opened a philosophy magazine in Italy, France or Germany a quar-ter of a century ago would, in all likelihood, have found several references to the impending death of philosophy, which had entered a pre-mortem phase after the disintegration of its illustrious tradition. Those who read an article reviewing the field of philosophy today will find themselves in front of a com-pletely transformed landscape wherein philosophical possibilities appear much more alive. I am not simply speaking of philosophys media visibility, but of the fact that the philosophic disciplines have revealed an unforeseen vitality in the face of post-industrial societys transformations, from computer science to bioethics to the cognitive sciences.

This observation provides a unifying thread which connects the philosophi-cal events of the last thirty years. To illustrate the transformations in extremely general terms, and in preparation for the picture of current philosophy painted in this volume, Id like to lay out the following four-part structure: (1) a record of the characteristics of continental philosophy in the last thirty years; (2) a description of its salient theoretical persistence, or rather of relativism; (3) an outline of the fundamental characteristics of contemporary analytic philoso-phy and the spread of these characteristics throughout the continent; (4) a description of the salient theoretical persistence of realism, marking the fun-damental characteristics and development of contemporary philosophy born from the merging of the continentalists and analytics.

2 Philosophy in Postmodern Times

Lets return to the death of philosophy. It was the era of postmodernism, or it soon would be, in which Jean-Francois Lyotards The Postmodern Condition, which began the debate in Europe, was published in 1979. In retrospect, what characterized those years was a widespread lack of faith in the resources that

1 Julia Heim translated this chapter.

2 ferraris

philosophical work provided. Surrounded by experts, philosophers with their best theories were like the keepers of a tradition on the brink of extinction; a tradition whose role, when not reduced to a simple historiography of a defunct discipline, consisted in keeping guard against the claims of scientists without, however, constructing a valid alternative.

Also in 1979, on the other side of the Atlantic, another book was published which was as long as Lyotards was shortPhilosophy and the Mirror of Nature, by the American philosopher Richard Rorty. Rortys thesis was that the classic function of philosophy as world knowledge producer had faded, and objectiv-ity was no longer important to the philosophertheir scope, instead, was to promote social solidarity. Taking Rortys argument as the exceptionthe her-esy of a defector from analytic philosophythe dominant tone of philosophy in continental Europe seemed to move in the direction of the postmodern.

In Germany, the philosophy born with Edmund Husserl as phenomenology (the description of the world as it appears in our consciousness) and reworked by Martin Heidegger as hermeneutics (the theory of interpretation) was taken up and disseminated in relation to the social sciences of Hans-Georg Gadamer, Heideggers student (Truth and Method 1960). From Gadamers perspective, philosophy as a foundation for thought needed to find its solution within hermeneuticsmeant as an open discourse and not a dogmatic approach toward the social and historic worldand within the hermeneutics of aesthet-ics and its weakening of sciences hold on the world. When his greatest work was published, Gadamer was criticized for his conservatism, and in particular for privileging traditiona tradition which would guide our interpretation of the worldwith respect to reason and reasons autonomous emancipat-ing force. However, the alternative was also opposed by the philosophers of the Frankfurt school (like Adorno and Horkheimer) and by their heirs, like Habermas, whose work rested on the assumption that philosophy continued to serve only one critical function, namely as a reflection of the social sciences just as, in its time, Kantian philosophy was posed as a reflection of the natural sciences, with no autonomous cognitive worth.

The French philosophical situation presented speculative aspects with a more radical tone (due to the assertive presence of Nietzsche, at the time a taboo author in a Germany just out of the war). The time of structuralismwhich had presented itself as a solution for philosophy which placed it within the social scienceshad ended, and the time of so-called poststructuralism had begun, represented by a compact generation of authors born in the second half of the 1920s and the start of the 1930s. Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida, along with Lyotard, whoin the end, not unlike the Germansdrew their theories from a re-elaboration of Husserl and Heidegger,

3From Postmodernism To Realism

confronting the problematics of the social sciences with the radicalism of the Nietzsche-Freud-Marx triad (which, expressive of the climax of those years, in the 1965 book, Freud and Philosophy; an Essay on Interpretation, the philoso-pher Paul Ricoeur baptized the hermeneutics of suspicion). In the triad, how-ever, the more theoretically-relevant authors were the first twoNietzsche, in the context of what was called the Nietzsche-Renaissance, and Freud, in the center of Jacques Lacans reflections, strongly influenced by Heidegger (crits 1966) and later in the critical renewal by Deleuze and Flix Guattari in Anti-Oedipus (1972). The Marx-Freud duo was presented, on the other hand, by Lyotard in Libidinal Economy (1974). In the arch that spanned from History of Madness (1961) to the volumes of the incomplete History of Sexuality (1976 ss.), Foucault was inspired essentially by a reflection of the relationship between knowledge and power. He presented his theories as a revival of ideological criticism, wherein instead of Capital by Marx, we find Nietzsches Genealogy of Morals. Derrida, on the other hand, merits a separate discourse; moving from phenomenology, he was able to take himself beyond the contingency of the postmodern (which he explicitly criticized, together with the thesis of the death of philosophy in On a Newly Arisen Apocalyptic Tone in Philosophy 1981), with an extremely rich theory that was in productive dialogue with cur-rent society and politics.

With the greater attention it paid to the historicity of thought (inherited from the neo-idealism of the first half of the twentieth century), we find the contem-porary Italian philosophy of the 1970s and 1980s at the confluence of German hermeneutics and French post-structuralism. This situationdemonstrated by works such as Essenza del nichilismo (1972) by Emanuele Severino, Krisis (1976) by Massimo Cacciari, and The End of Modernity (1985) by Gianni Vattimo, who overtly presented himself as the Italian leader toward the postmodernhas been well captured in two volumes written by various authors: La crisi della ragione, edited by Aldo Giorgio Gargani in 1979, and Weak Thought edited by Pier Aldo Rovatti and Vattimo in 1983. The underlying idea was that philoso-phy should dispose of any foundational ambition (which was understood as a metaphysical or positivistic remnant). Italian philosophy in this time modeled itselfas in The Crisis of Reasonafter a strongly relativistic interpretation of Wittgenstein (who in Philosophical Investigations, published posthumously in 1953, had spoken of a plurality of linguistic games, or the multiplicity of rea-son paradigms). Another modelas in Weak Thoughtidentified reason as intrinsically violent and (inspired by Nietzsches project, then presented again by Heidegger, of an overcoming of metaphysics) proposing an abandonment of reason at the hand of a spirituality that would define itself more and more in religious terms. Together with historicism transformed into hermeneutics,

4 ferraris

this spiritualistic outcome undoubtedly constituted a specificity of the Italian philosophic situation (see, for example, Carlo Augusto Viano in V pensiero. Il carattere della filosofia contemporanea 1985).

3 The Old SynthesisRelativism

Beyond national particularities, the common ideals of the trends that merged with postmodernity anticipated that in the modern world philosophy would only be allowed to provide a second or third level of reflection. These reflec-tions consisted in weakening the authority of scientific declarations, either through historical relativity or through hermeneutic deconstruction. An anti-foundational and relativistic deadlock was being created which could not be sustained for long, and the same postmodern Italians admitted this when they turned toward a more religious spirituality (see, in particular, Vattimos Belief 1996).

If the situation in Italy presented itself as a sort of second-thought or pen-ance, often performed by the same interpreters of postmodern philosophy, in France and Germany there existed much more complex phenomena. In France there was the refusal of what was defined as the thought of 68 (see, Luc Ferry and Alain Renauts Thought of 68 1985), or the critical revision of Foucaults and Lyotards positions (for this see, above all The Differend 1983, which presents itself as a precocious disavowal of the theses in The Postmodern Condition). In Germany, to the contrary, a rational foundationon the basis of a renewed appeal toward Kantian transcendentalism, and an encounter with the linguistic turns of Anglo-Saxon philosophywas being pursued, like that proposed by Karl-Otto Apel in Towards a Transformation of Philosophy (1973) and then by Habermas in the seminal Theory of Communicative Action (1981), whose book would enter into an open polemic with the postmodern in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (1985).

Through the 1990s it became clear, however, that the postmodern fusion of thought was in reality much more localized than had previously been assumed. Philosophy doesnt end with Nietzsche and Heidegger any more than we can say the world ends at the English Channel and the Atlantic. A globalization of philosophy emerges, within the hybridizations and encounters of the world scene, in a way that could not have been foreseen, and the same technical instruments that once guaranteed cultural globalization essentially, web resourceswill provide a pathway for a renewal of continental philosophy which, meanwhile, will resume its dialogue with the developments in the


Anglo-Saxon world in a condition (different from previous dialogues) which appeared inferior.

4 The Analytics Land on the Continent

Beyond the allure of globalization, the reasons for the new penetrative power of analytic philosophy in Europe, and for the transformation that stemmed from such power throughout the entire philosophical scene, are ascribable to a complex series of reasons that, overall, go back to an advancement of analytic philosophy. This enrichment rendered it more apt to hybridize itself with the fabric of a continental philosophy busy rethinking the limits of the postmod-ernism it had reached.

An initial condition is represented by the abandonment of the neo- positivistic paradigm, or rather of the idea of a philosophy which, when not directly dependent on it, was strictly aligned with science. In reality, this abandonment had already been taking place since the middle of the twen-tieth century, but it had lived on as the ideal of a scientific philosophy. The decline, even at the level of general framework, of any neo-positivist inclina-tion rendered analytic philosophy more able to concern itself with realms like the previously neglected ethics and aesthetics and to act more broadly, even in the social sciences. This has been well demonstrated by John R. Searles book The Construction of Social Reality (1995). On another level, the abandoning of every neo-positivist superstructure has entailed the decline of prejudicial anti-metaphysics which united large parts of both analytic and continental philos-ophy for the greater part of the twentieth century. This was the case even with prominent exceptions from both ends (Nicolai Hartmann, from the continen-tal philosophy sidesee New Ways of Ontology 1941and Peter F. Strawson from the analytic sidesee Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics 1959), even in light of the urgings produced by the technological revolution and by the cognitive sciences, which began to look toward a new actualization for a philosophy no longer constrained to the field of the critique of reason.

A second, perhaps more relevant element consists of the abandonment of a linguistic turn which re-employed the Wittgenstein-inspired thesis that posed philosophical problems as language problems. This abandonment pro-vides a new vastness for the analytic philosophy field. The excessive restrict-ing of a philosophical investigation confined by language was a highbrow problem from the continental end, as it was for Umberto Eco in Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language (1984). The transformation in progress, however,

6 ferraris

ended up outlining a new structuring of the analytic contribution to the over-all philosophical debate. From a niche philosophy, it could become a general philosophy partly because, compared to the continental philosophies, it does not seem afflicted by relativism or the subaltern with respect to historiographic philosophy, and it is set up by shared argumentative methods. In this way, new perspectives are opened for philosophy of the mind (Daniel C. Dennett, The Intentional Stance 1987), the cognitive sciences are making their voices heard (Alvin I. Goldman, Liaisons: Philosophy Meets the Cognitive and Social Sciences 1992). Perception, now seen as a dimension not exclusively subordinated to language and to conceptual structures (in agreement with the pioneering work of Gareth Evans, The Varieties of Reference 1982). forms a new area of philo-sophic interest.

Beside this opening of the field is the rising historiographic self-conscious-ness of analytic philosophy, which recognizes the specificity of its own auton-omy and continuity with traditional philosophy, as Michel Dummett wrote in Origins of Analytic Philosophy (1993). One who had read Gottlob Frege (con-sidered to be the forefather of analytic philosophy) and Husserl when they were published would not have seen two separate worlds. Initially it was the continentalists who built bridges between the two traditions (see pioneering works such as Wittgenstein: la rime et la raison. Science, ethique et esthetique, 1973, by Jacques Bouveresse; Traditional and Analytic Philosophy, 1976, by Ernst Tugendhat, and; La formalizzazione della dialettica. Hegel, Marx e la logica contemporanea, edited in 1979 by Diego Marconi), but now the reverse is hap-pening. From this perspective, authors like Kevin Mulligan, Barry Smith and Peter Simons (among whose works should be noted the exemplary anthology of works in the Cambridge Companion on Husserl which came out in 1995) are marked by a characteristic openness toward phenomenology and anti- Kantian realist ontology, within the frame of, in formally more-structured terms, an arrangement of a line of research that flourished in the twentieth century pri-marily in the context of continental philosophy. In this same realm, though with differing philosophical intentions (in particular, a strong reinstatement of Kant), one may place a work that was largely acknowledged also within conti-nental philosophy, namely Mind and World (1994) by John McDowell.

5 The New Synthesis: Realism

On the level of theory, the most noteworthy significance of the prevalence of analytics is the return to realism, even in authors with predominantly conti-nental backgrounds like Eco (see Kant and the Platypus 1997) and Habermas


(Truth and Justification 1999). Philosophy is not just a second-level reflection called to either declare the superiority of the question over the answer or to dispel problems instead off resolving them, and perhaps conclude that every-thing is relative. There is a solid nucleus of reality, which gives sense to our con-cepts and respect to which philosophy, not unlike other forms of knowledge, can produce answers. The principle lines of this thesis, which contrasts itself with the postmodern and extensively twentieth-century argument viewing reality as largely a social construct, are delineated by Searle as a background of reality. Reality constitutes a shared backdrop for our theories and it is a mistake to confuse the diversity of the systems of measurement and the con-ceptual schemes with that to which they refer.

In this picture, as I have suggested in my personal research, the decisive aspect is to trace a distinction between that which exists (ontology) and that which we know with respect to that which exists (epistemology). The confu-sion between ontology and epistemology is at the root of the relativism (and, more deeply, the irrealism) prevalent in the philosophy of the second half of the twentieth century, which assumed that reality was simply the fruit of social construction and the conceptual schemes we use to relate to the world. It is, broadly speaking, starting from this new synthesis that I believe we can pro-ductively read contemporary philosophy as it is laid out in this volume. We depart from at least one conviction which is ontologically (or existentially) reassuring, and that is that despite the prophesies of the previous century, philosophy is not dead, and indeed fights along with usor at least rolls up its sleeves.

koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 4|doi .63/978900469347_3

chapter 1

Metaphysics and Ontology1

Tiziana Andina and Andrea Borghini

1.1 The Beginnings

Metaphysics and ontology, at a glance, circle around a simple question: what exists? If it is true, as there are many ways of verifying, that human behavior is characterized by a pronounced level of conceptualization, metaphysics and ontology study a central aspect of living, not only from a theoretical perspec-tive, but also from a practical one. Every gesture, even the most quotidian, whether we realize it or not, is based on a certain way of perceiving the world that surrounds us. That is why delving into this aspect becomes one of phi-losophys primary tasks, even if it is often accompanied by a significant level of theoretical difficulty.

What is the relationship between ontology and metaphysics? First of all, to clarify, the two terms have very different origins which date back to the 1600s and the first century B.C., respectively. These are two sides of the same coin which, as we will see, have been depicted in various different ways through-out the centuries (infra, 1.2). In this chapter we have decided to adopt a dis-tinction that has been supported by various contemporary authors, among whom is Achille Varzi,2 for example, and which can be traced back to Edmund Husserl and even Scholasticism. In short, the assumption is that when one is dealing with the study of key principles with which to discuss what exists, it is better to keep separate those whose formulation abstracts from the spe-cific realm of the discourse (art instead of math or biology), and those who, instead, find justification within a specific area. Let us call the first principles metaphysical, and the second principles ontological. Our treatment will follow this distinction.3

1 The chapter was conceptualized collectively; however Andrea Borghini wrote sections 1.1., 1.1.2., 1.1.4., 1.1.5., 1.1.6., 1.1.7., 1.1.8., and Tiziana Andina wrote sections 1.2., 1.2.1., 1.3., 1.3.1., 1.3.2., 1.3.3., 1.3.4., 1.3.5. This chapter has been translated into English by Julia Heim.

2 Cf. Varzi 2005, especially the first chapter. For a more detailed overview of the topics dis-cussed here, see also Loux 2002.

3 It is worth remembering, in this regard, that a theoretical distinction of a different kind is offered by Maurizio Ferraris (2001) who proposes adopting a distinction which separates the

9Metaphysics And Ontology

1.1.1 At the Roots of MetaphysicsFor metaphysics what is meant is a series of treatises written by Aristotle and later gathered under that title. Their first edition was compiled by Andronicus of Rhodes in the first century B.C. after an incredible finding about two hun-dred and fifty years after the death of the famous philosopher. Not know-ing how to label the text that came after Physics, Andronico used the term Metaphysics, which literally means after physics. Since the text had to do with reality in its most fundamental and general aspects, later critics thought that metaphysics had to do with what was beyond the realm of investigation within physics. In fact, as we shall see, metaphysicswhen taken as a disci-pline of philosophyhas to do with questions that lie beyond the possibilities of empirical inquiry, since it investigates the conceptual structures that charac-terize the inquiry itself, including the relationship between object and subject.

Though the term was introduced close to the Christian age, this does not mean that metaphysics was not previously expatiated. On the contrary, many of the most expansive works in the realm of metaphysics come from the period that preceded the neologism. A list of them might include the treatises of Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Pythagoras, Euclides, Zeno of Elis, Platos Parmenides and many other classics from the Ancient Western Tradition. Likewise, impor-tant authors and works of other philosophical traditions also dealt with the subject, such as the Tao Te Ching (a classic Chinese text dating back to at least the third century B.C.), and the work of the two Indian Buddhist monks Ngrjuna (approximately 150250 A.D.) and Vasubandhu (fourth century A.D.). We might also add numerous other literary and religious texts that con-tain reflections on the structure of reality.

During the Middle Ages there was a creative flourishing of metaphysical positions. To formulate an apt theology you must know how to precisely state the make-up of God, the trinity, angels and the soul with relation to the body, and so on. Debates that stem from the famous dispute between the nominalists and realists (we will discuss this later on) during the most intense period of scholastic medieval timesbetween the eleventh and fourteenth centuriesare still with us today, like the dispute over the nature of relations or accidental and essential properties. Metaphysical inquiry is also central to philosophical

realm of what is (ontology) from the realm used to investigate what we know based on what is (epistemology). The confusion between these two realms would cause a relativism, which often leads to markedly unrealistic positions, as with a large portion of the philosophy of the 1900s when it was believed that reality was essentially the fruit of social construction. From the application of certain conceptual plans there was no longer a way to separate a reality independent of the subject from the subject that knew this reality.

10 andina and borghini

reflections of the modern age, characterized by radical positions that, even today, mark the large majority of our conceptual limits of the worldfrom the dualist metaphysics proposed by Ren Descartes to Spinozian monism, and from the monadology of Gottfried Leibniz to the empiricism of John Locke and David Hume, to the Kantian distinction between phenomena and noumena.

It might be precisely with Kant that a certain type of analysis of reality ends. While pre-Kantian philosophy began with the objecttherefore with meta-physicsto develop an ethics, an epistemology, a theology, etc., in much of the post-Kantian philosophy the intentional acts of the subject take precedence over the analysis of the perceived object.4 The perceived object exists only in as much as it is possibly contained by thought and the properties of this thought are what must be examined. Metaphysics returns to center-stage almost simul-taneously with what are today the two principle Western traditions: continen-tal and analytical philosophy. In terms of continental philosophy, it suffices to remember that both the ideas of Martin Heidegger and those of Jean-Paul Sartre are difficult to understand without an analysis of their metaphysical positions, and analogous considerations are necessary in the case of authors like Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Emmanuel Lvinas. On the other hand, Bertrand Russell and George E. Mooreinfluenced also by philosophers from the old continent like Bernard Bolzano, Franz Brentano, Alexius Meinong and Gottlob Fregetwo analytic philosophers, bring genuine metaphysical ques-tions to the forefront. In the second half of the 1900s analytic philosophy was in the midst of a true flourishing, especially during the last thirty years of the century, thanks to the work of authors like Peter Strawson, David Wiggins, Willard V. O. Quine, Roderick Chisholm, David Lewis, Alvin Plantinga, Peter van Inwagen, Jonathan Lowe, Ted Sider and, to mention a few Italian authors, Maurizio Ferraris, Enrico Berti, Roberto Casati and Achille Varzi.5

This same history of metaphysics gives us something to discuss and even the few reflections we have given up to this point are disputed among the experts. The themes and approaches are many and varied. As such, the discussion must be organized based on a selection.6 Therefore, six fundamental ideas have been

4 Cf. Ferraris 2001, 2013, for a more in depth analysis.5 Varzi 2008 gathers an ample selection of key contemporary metaphysical texts in their

Italian translations; in it are specific references to a large number of the questions raised here. Useful readers in English are Sider, Hawthorne and Zimmerman (2008) as well as Loux (2001).

6 Cf. Mou & Tieszen 2013 for a useful study including the contemporary scholarship that explores how relevant resources from different philosophical traditions make joint contribu-tions to the development of contemporary philosophy.


chosen and will be examined using a theoretical approach and following the analytic tradition. Before continuing with their analysis, however, it is helpful to frame the discussion by analyzing two related arguments: the relationship between common sense, science and metaphysics on one hand, and the intel-lectual duty of philosophers who deal with metaphysics on the other. Let us look at them in that order.

1.1.2 Common Sense, Science and MetaphysicsHow many grams of carbohydrates, proteins and lipids did you consume dur-ing your last meal? We are certain that many, these days, would know how to answer a question of that kind with sufficient proximity. And yet, no one has ever seen a carbohydrate, a protein or a lipid. We are dealing with theoreti-cal terms, without direct observable correlations, that have meaning inside a theory of food chemistry. Analogous considerations could be made for elec-trons, protons, neutrons and so on. With a book in our hands we believe that we are dealing with a solid, rectangular, unique object whose parts are spa-tially connected; and yet based on the description that a physicist could give, we are talking about a multitude of particles that move at lightning speeds. A scientific image of the world does not depend on the senses; in fact, it often contradicts them, trusting instead other revelatory instruments. On the con-trary, an every day picture of the world, what we will call the common sense picture, depends on our sensorial analyses. The ocean is salty, ice cream is sweet, ricotta is heavy and a turtle is slowall of these adjectives are used in reference to the human perceptive system. Obviously, both scientific prac-tices and daily living suggest more than just one structure of reality. As for science, we have varying theoretical alternatives with respect to the origins of the universe, what the fundamental particles of physics are, what the fun-damental bonds in organic chemistry are, or how to understand evolution by natural selection. Analogously, some people live out their daily lives with the belief that the world is populated by gods or even ghosts, that miracles are pos-sible, that cows have a soul, that dogs are food, and others refuse some or all of these things. In sum, science and common sense seem to articulate answers based on the structure of reality. However, considering that metaphysics deals with precisely this, how should it position itself in the face of the other two modes of thought? Is there a hierarchy of interests? Do privileged levels of analysis exist?

The questions raised are particularly relevant to metaphysics because they problematize the concept of existence. Let us return to the situation with the book. One of the ways to see the matter is the following. We have a spatio-temporal location in which we say there is a book; at the same time, we might


say that in that location there are multiple moving particles; and the list of alternate possibilities could go on. To cite a few, one possibility would be based on the chemical composition of the area, another on the organic material, and another still on the semantic contents of the book. These accounts tell us that in that location there are things, but each arrives at a different result with regard to what those things are. And so a meta-account which synthesizes them all, at least for now, is yet to come.

What was said of the book is also true for everything we have eaten today, for the ocean, the beach and the sun, for Botticellis Venus and for every living being including humans. What relationship remains between what a meticu-lous particle-physicist, an organic chemist, an anatomist and my sister could explain about the spatio-temporal area I am occupying at this moment? More generally, what relationship remains between the different accounts of the same pieces of reality? Metaphysical reflection finds one of its principle tasks precisely in this field.

We can distinguish this relevant metaphysical position by following two directions. The first has to do with the degree of deference (it might be bet-ter to call it epistemic trust) that we have toward science (cf., infra 6.1). According to the first positionlets call it scientific metaphysicsthings only exist that figure into the best scientific theory we have at our disposal (cf., for example, Armstrong 1989; Lewis 1986). On the other hand we might see that a position of this kind risks being myopic for two reasons. First and foremost, aside from some principles, we dont have a substantially agreed upon scien-tific theory of natural phenomena.7 Furthermore, it seems difficult to be able to explain, in scientific terms, the meaning that many Italians give to lentils at New Year or the Festival of Sanremo, Polynesia, or the Postal Servicethese are rooted in social acts the significance of which (at least in appearance) are not describable within the terms of a scientific theory. Clearly scientific metaphys-ics (cf. Lewis 1986) would interject that the examples in question constitute poor descriptions of physical events. However, it seems that one of the main characteristics of human beings is their capacity to organize their lives around objects and events whose significance cannot be elaborated in scientific terms, as such, scientific metaphysics, in this case, could devalue something of impor-tance. Those scientific metaphysicians who fall under this last category should be further divided in two sects, the first being the supporters of a liberal metaphysics who allow for a plurality of legitimate metaphysical positions (cf. Dupr 1995); this sect finds difficulty in individuating a notion of truth that is not relative to the adopted position. Then there is descriptive metaphysics,

7 Cf., among others, Dupr (1995).


for which common sense is supposed to get the better of scientific accounts.8 Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to define common sense in an exact way, and so the sect based on it risks exposing itself to indeterminacy.

The second direction of the metaphysical reflection of the relationship between different accounts of reality has to do with philosophical behavior in relation to existence, as separate from references to other scientific theories. Let us again consider our book. Eliminativism would hold that there is only one true account for that spatio-temporal areaall of the other accounts are false and therefore must be eliminated.9 On the other hand, the majority of elimi-nativists are also scientific metaphysicists who have opted for an articulation of an account of the spatio-temporal area within elementary- particle terms. In literature, eliminativist and non scientific solutions also exist. Reductionism, on the other hand, supports the belief that all of the accounts in question (and all others that are believed to be plausible) are true; however, they are true in virtue of the existence of one single objectwe are talking about the funda-mental particles, or the book. The existence of everything else is metaphysi-cally (even if not conceptually) reduced to the existence of that kind of object.10 Many philosophers today support reductionist positions even if they often do it locally. For example, they might argue that the mind is reduced to the body, or rather that biological facts may be reduced to chemical processes which, in turn, may be reduced to physical processes. Finally, pluralism (again cf. Dupr 1995) supports a multiplicity of true accounts. Again, the difficulty in this case lies in finding a way to maintain a strong notion of truth while defend-ing relativism. Numerous pluralist metaphysicians are also conventionalists, or rather, they believe that the truths of an account exist because of convention. The book, therefore, exists because of a daily convention among the speakers of our language, and particles exist because they are postulated through the conventions of scientific theory. If something exists outside of conventions it remains a fundamental problem.

1.1.3 The Two Metaphysics: Describing and PrescribingBoth of the directions followed in the preceding section suggest two diverse con-ceptions of metaphysics: one absolute and the other relative. Eliminativism and reductionism belong to the first type, as do scientific metaphysics and descriptive metaphysics. Pluralism and liberal metaphysics belong, on the other hand, to the second type. As for relativists, metaphysical discussion

8 Cf. for example, the section dedicated to nave knowledge in Ferraris 2008, 273 et seq. 9 Cf. Varzi 2001, 2425.10 Again, cf. Varzi 2001, 2425.


must refer to a type of investigation which traces out the main coordinates. In this sense the question remains open as to whether or not a core of prin-ciples exists which every investigation, in part or in total, accepts or whether relativists refrain from this (however minimal) engagement. Some of these questions are at the core of the work of Willard Quine, one of the protagonists of the analytic philosophical debate of the twentieth century. On the other side, the absolutists consider metaphysics to be the realm of investigation that researches valid universal principles. Some of these principles are formal, or rather valid, independent of the specific material constitution of the world; for example, they belong to a category of mereological principles (that gov-ern the relationship between the parts and the whole) or the relationship of ontological dependence, discussed below. Other principles, on the other hand, are material, or rather they depend on the specific perspective regarding the last elements. An eliminativist who considers reality to be composed of strings (as supported by the so called string theory) will sustain different material principles with respect to an eliminativist who follows common sense. Some make the distinction between formal principles and material ones coincide with the distinction between metaphysics (formal principles) and ontology (material principles).11

Absolutist and relativist conceptions are useful for introducing another, perhaps deeper pair of distinct metaphysical behaviors: prescriptive (or cor-rective) and descriptive ones.12 What is the task of metaphysics? Does it have to do with examining the world and offering arguments for or against the existence of a category of objects? Or does it have to do with collaborating with others to try to bring order and conceptual clarity to a predetermined discourse, whose truth does not depend on metaphysical judgment? Let us take, for example, the case of a scientific metaphysician and eliminativist who believes that the world is made of physical atoms. According to this perspec-tive, people, sheep, cows, pines and figs dont exist, and books, oceans and the sun also do not existthe only thing that exists are clouds of atoms that move at great speeds. We are talking about a prescriptionthe large majority of people believe that all of those things exist, but if they reflected on it with the right attitude they would understand that their beliefs are not founded. Philosophically speaking, the task of this metaphysics consists precisely in explaining why the majority of people are wrong. On par with this metaphys-ics, when we sometimes find ourselves discussing specific metaphysical prob-lems, we would like to say that things must be a certain waycows must have

11 On this distinction see also Varzi (2005), chapter 1. 12 This question is taken on by various other authors, among whom is Varzi (2001), 2833.


a soul, the mind must depend on the brain, an event must have a cause. In these, as in similar cases, we are doing prescriptive or corrective metaphys-ics. On the contrary, descriptive metaphysics is not a corrective approach with regard to a precise vision of the world. The objective, contrastingly, is to shed light on fundamental principles upon which we organize reality, assum-ing their truth within the specific realm of discourse. Let us suppose that we must collaborate with the person in charge of the marketing for a large store to more deeply understand the structure of that reality. Our task would not be to negate the existence of cookies or shirts in favor of atoms or strings, but rather to clarify the criteria under which the products are subdivided within the categories and systems of the various shelves, or to reflect on the subdivi-sions of space and the way in which this is received by the consumers. The risk is that this approach may produce an analysis of the situation which is not suf-ficiently critical and therefore not effective. Also, a classification of products in a supermarket (for example) responds to specific practical needs for which there will be good and bad solutions, and presumably it will be true or false that a certain metaphysical principle can contribute appropriately, or not, in distinguishing a solution. Analogously, in responding to questions like what is a recipe? or what is blues? it doesnt seem possible to elaborate a simple description of recipes or blues riffs. A normative component is necessaryboth recipes and blues riffs must exhibit certain features, otherwise they would not be what they are.

Before moving on, note that the metaphysical approaches dealt with until now are not only applicable with regard to general theories of reality, but are also useful with respect to specific domains. The metaphysical problems that we deal with are often local. On September 11, 2001, in lower Manhattan, were there one or two terrorist attempts? Are a genetically modified tomato and its non modified progenitor of the same species? Is a Florentine steak a natu-ral or artificial object? What is the relationship between Marilyn Monroe and her body? Some philosophersincluding those writing hereprefer to begin with local problems when dealing with a large part of contemporary meta-physical issues. From this perspective, it is possible to think of a form of meta-pluralism, or rather a position of metaphysics that, according to the question at hand, adopts a specific metaphysical behavior (eliminativist, reductionist, pluralist etc.). From these premises we may begin to examine the principal ideas of metaphysics, beginning with existence.

1.1.4 ExistenceWhat exists? Everything, you might say. As Quine 1948 pointed out, if we say that there are things that do not exist we seem to fall into a contradiction or


we involuntarily support a bizarre metaphysics like that elaborated by philoso-pher Alexius Meinong, according to whom some things are but do not exist. Clearly, we have innumerable ways of refusing the everything which exists. In the preceding sections we traced out some criteria that help to map out what there is. There are other positions that deserve to be remembered for their historical importance.13 The Platonists hold that everything that exists is able to be subdivided into two fundamental categories: material and ideal entities. The first includes everything that exists which has a historical boundary, or rather is tied to precise points within a spatio-temporal network; for example, think of how the life of a rose is limited by a precise temporal organization. On the other hand, the ideal entities are independent of the way in which they are spatio-temporally linked; numbers, geometric figures, meanings and, accord-ing to some, the soul or spirit are a few examples of this. Materialists retort that all that exists depends on that which is materialthere are no souls or spirits, numbers, figures or meanings that can give sense to the existence of a material object. Because of this, ideal entities depend on material ones. The Platonists would object that the dependence of the ideal on the material is accidental, while that which is ideal has ontological priority in relation to that which is material. The number twenty-seven is not identical to any of its inscriptionson the contrary, the inscriptions of twenty-seven are what they are in virtue of the existence of the number. We are talking here about an ancient dispute that goes back to the origins of philosophy.

How might we explain the meaning of existence? In the Western tradi-tion this question has received a multitude of responses. For the Platonists, existence had to do with different degrees of perfection, and the same can be said of people, films, sports cars and so on. This position was privileged until at least the time of the Renaissance and was taken up again in the 1900s thanks to Being and Time (1996) by Martin Heidegger. In the meanwhile, another view had been gaining ground, according to which existence is not a predicate. This is one of the central theses of modern philosophy and logic and was already formulated in Kants Critique of Pure Reason (1998). According to this thesis, existing is neither an activity nor a quality, and it does not mean doing some-thing or being a certain way. When a person affirms that something exists, he or she is simply saying that the thing enters into his or her realm of discourse. This point has also been expressed in more rigorous terms, through a lan-guage of logic, by saying that existing means being part of the realm within which the quantifiers of language range, or rather, to be one of the possible

13 On the dispute between the Platonists and the Nominalists, cf. also Varzi (2005), section 3.1.1. and Varzi (2001), chapter 7.


values assigned to a variable which is constrained by a quantifier (cf. infra ch. 4.4.4). Notice that the thesis is about existing and not living. The term living seems to express an activityliving beings and non-living beings are distinguished by what they do, like metabolizing and self-reproducing. Saying that the dog Fido exists is different than saying he is alive. In the first instance we are simply saying that Fido is a part of the all, and in the second case, we are saying, among other things, that Fido metabolizes what he eats and has (or could have had) the capacity to reproduce.

1.1.5 IdentityWhen talking about identity in metaphysics one could mean strict identity, also called numeric identity, or rather generic identity. Two identical twins are identical in the generic sensethey are not the same in all aspects (typically not even genetically), but they look a lot alike. Analogously, if we find our-selves at a reception and we need to choose between two cans of Chinotto on the table in front of us, we would say that it doesnt matter which one we take because they are identical, but, obviously, we dont mean that they have everything in common. On the contrary, those who sustain that the mind is the same as the brain mean to say that they are the same thing, like when, to explain the plot, we say that Clark Kent is Superman. We are talking about a strict identity.

The primary doctrine of strict identity is often said to be that everything is identical to itself and to nothing else. The way to specify this slogan, in perhaps a more clear way, is to use the so-called principle of the indiscernibility of identicals that dates back at least as far as Gottfried Leibniz. This states that if x and y are identical, then they have the same properties. This principle, at first glance, appears airtight. And yet, in a recent metaphysical debate this claim was put into discussion.14 For example, take a cracker and consider its right half and its left; from one side, it seems clear that the cracker has identical halves, and yet the cracker is one whole while the halves are two. Or consider a soccer team and its players during a gamein as much as one would think that they are identical, the team competes for a championship, but the players who lead the team to victory do not. Finally, one will see that the principle of the indiscernibility of identicals must be kept separate and distinct from its converse, the principle of the identity of indiscernibles, which states that if every property of x is also a property of y, the two are identical. This principle seems even more suspect and is often refuted by metaphysicians.15

14 Varzi (2001), 6566.15 Cf. Varzi (2001), 96130 and Loux (2002), 97101.


A separate case has to do with diachronic identity, or rather the identity of a body through time, as was discussed by Aristotle and also by a large num-ber of the classics of Western metaphysics. The fundamental idea is that every living organism is the product of a process of development during which the organism inevitably changes. Every human being, for example, starts from a fertilized cell and develops into a complex system that includes billions of cells which specialize in different tasks. It is common practice to speak about a human being as being the same throughout the entire arc of his or her life, but are we referring to a strict identity or a generic one? According to one line of thought,16 that of the so called endurance theorists, we are dealing with a particular case of strict identity. In the diachronic case, in fact, identity is not governed by the principles of the indiscernibility of identicals but by a weaker version of the principle. The so called perdurantists retort that we are dealing with a case of generic identity, and that during each instant of the life of the organism we have a new individual which we generically consider the same in virtue of the similarities and the causal relationship with its previous stage of development. Every stage is a part of the entire individual, and it configures itself as a quadridimensional entity. The organism refers to the entire succes-sion of individuals which are causally linked and similar. The dispute between the endurantists and the perdurantists, with relevant facets which we cannot elaborate in this forum, has been, in recent years and even today, the center of an intense debate in analytic metaphysics.

1.1.6 Individuals, Events and PropertiesExistence and identity are based on entities, in whatever they may be, and because of this they determine certain formal characteristics of all that is. What are the chief categories into which we may subdivide that all? We will start from the most common and basicthe individuals. They may be considered the protagonists of Western metaphysics. With the exception of some events like a sea storm or a soccer championship, everything that exists is, at least in the common sense, a way of being for some individual. Human beings are themselves individuals and can be used to exemplify the category. Giuseppe Garibaldi was an individual. There have been many similar leaders, but none of them was Garibaldi. The day Garibaldi died, he was no longer an individual. Garibaldi, therefore, was one, though according to some he wasnt by virtue of his properties. We might think of reproducing an individual indistinguishable from Garibaldi (completely identical in all respects) and yet even that would not be Garibaldi.

16 On the distinctions that follow see also Varzi (2001), chapter 5.


Properties are, on the other hand, that which gives an entity (including an individual) its way of being. Garibaldis beard was one of his properties, just like his being courageous or Italian. But properties are also the basis for events, a category which is often contrasted with individuals; with the exception of goals (for example the reaching of a peak or summit) an event has a diachronic development and it is not necessary that it be countable. The wind, an earth-quake, a concertthese are all examples of events, the first of which does not seem countable. Even events have propertieswind might be hot and intense, an earthquake minor, a concert long and engaging.

A classic metaphysical problem, posed first by Plato, deals with the rela-tionship between properties and the entities that, one might say, instantiate them.17 According to one reading, if it is true that Socrates is wise, meaning that there exists a relationship R1 between the individual Socrates and wisdom. But, one might ask, what makes this relationship link wisdom to Socrates? If we say that R1 is linked to wisdom because of a relationship R2 and to Socrates because of another relationship R3, we might ask what links R1 to R2 and to wisdom, on one hand, and R1 to R3 and to Socrates on the other; and so on. For this reason, some authors have preferred to maintain that properties do not exist: this position is called nominalism and its more sophisticated formula-tions can be found in the late medieval period in works by authors like William of Ockham and John Buridan. Others, on the other hand, maintain that the above problem can be circumvented by adopting a wary theory of instan-tiation. This position takes the name realism and includes a large part of Western philosophers, including high caliber names like Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. A third, larger group maintains that the individuals must be, meta-physically speaking, eliminated, that properties are all that exist. This position is called universalism or tropism depending on whether the properties are considered as universals or tropes. In the first case, the different instances of a property are considered numerically identical and, at the same time, multiple. For example, the electric charge of an electron is numerically identical in every electron and this explains their perfect resemblance. According to the theory of tropes, on the other hand, the different instances are numerically distinct, even though they enjoy a primitive resemblance (not reducible, or not sharing other properties). The charge of an electron is distinct from that of every other electron, despite the fact that there is a perfect resemblance between the two (which is not otherwise definable). The dispute between nominalists, realists, universalists and tropists is one of the most lively and complex within meta-physics, and not just Western metaphysics.

17 For the distinctions that follow cf. Varzi (2005), 3.1.1.


1.1.7 Types of Properties and RelationsIf it is the task of metaphysics to study the structure of reality, one of the key instruments for being successful in the endeavor is to take advantage of an adequate range of properties so that one might subtly distinguish between the typologies of individuals and events. In short, there are properties and there are properties. Here we will consider four of the most important types of prop-erties, and then we shall conclude with a brief note on their relations.18

Saying that Azrael the cat is alive is very different to saying that he is cud-dled up. While Azrael could very easily stand up and continue to exist, the cat could not stop living without ceasing to exist. (Naturally, depending on the point of view, it is perfectly acceptable to say that the body of Azrael would continue to exist, and that Azrael, all the same, would no longer exist.) In other words, while being cuddled is an accidental property of Azrael (the cat could easily have stayed on his feet), being alive is an essential property. If he lost this property, he would simply cease to exist. A property is essential for an indi-vidual when the individual maintains that property in all possible situations. Contrastingly, a property is accidental when in at least one situation that indi-vidual loses or gains that property without ceasing to be. Essential properties of an individual are therefore properties that are necessary for the individuals existence. According to a certain essentialist tradition, then, essential prop-erties are the properties that define the individual. Aside from being neces-sary for the existence of Azrael, therefore, being alive would also be a part of his definition (some contemporary authors, indeed, take care to tell apart necessary and essential propertiesonly the latter defines an individual). This should not be confused with the (hardly credible) thesis which purports that an essential property is sufficient in itself to maintain an individuals existence.

Also relevant is the distinction between simple and determinable proper-ties, a transverse operation with respect to the one we have just seen regarding accidental and essential properties. A property is simple when either you pos-ses it or you dont. Being an Italian citizen is a simple property; there is no in betweeneither you are an Italian citizen or you are not. A determinable property, on the other hand, allows for gradations based on a certain scale. For example, being a color is a determinable property within the color wheel,

18 Useful to consult for the elaborations that follow, aside from the cited introductory texts by Varzi (2001) and (2005), see the philosophy dictionary by Floridi and Terravecchia (2009).


and being a certain weight is a determinable property within a certain scale of measurement.

A third distinction between atomic properties and structural properties perpendicularly cuts the two properties just mentioned. As we know, water is a compound element, and its chemical structure is (at least partially) sche-matized within the formula H2O. Let us take the property being a water mol-ecule, which belongs to all that which is water and to nothing else. Being a water molecule would be a structural property, precisely because it charac-terizes all of and only certain structures, i.e. those which contain two exem-plifications of the property being hydrogen and one exemplification of the property being oxygen, related in a certain way to become a certain qualita-tive structure. Other examples of structural properties include being a verte-brate, being a heart, being a cell, and also being a car, being a cigarette and being a watch. On the other hand, atomic properties are those which have no structure. The concept is as easy to explain as it is difficult to find examples. At one time, it was believed that atoms were, dare we say, atomic. Later, electrons and protons were seen as atomic, then quarks...in essence, there is a continual discussion about what the truly last individuals and the truly atomic properties are. But we may also cite some cases that do not stem from the natural sciences. So, the properties which are characteristic of certain colors, like being white (if we understand whiteness as a perceptive property) are atomic, and some maintain that fundamental properties in ethics and aes-thetics, goodness and beauty, are also atomic.

Lastly, let us cite a distinction between intrinsic properties and extrinsic properties which has been at the center of numerous debates in recent years. Approximately speaking, an individual possesses intrinsic properties indepen-dent of the context in which they find themself. The form of a triangle, for example, does not depend on the context in which the triangle is found, unlike its distance from a circle; this distance would be an extrinsic property.

Before moving forward let us mention an equally important themethat of the relationship between individuals. Among these relationships, some of the most important are spatio-temporal relationships, the relationship of onto-logical dependence (for example, a group does not exist without its members), the relationship of occurrence (for example, there could not be a difference in our thoughts without there being a difference in our mental states), and the relationship of causality. We cannot deal with each of these separately, but you will notice that, despite the fact that in metaphysics relationships are often considered analogous to properties, they present unique difficulties. Firstly, since the instantiation of a relationship involves two or more individuals, the


modalities within which the relationship takes place should be clarified: is a relationship like a bridge that rests on the two individuals involved? Or does it exist separately in each of the individuals? In this last case, what links the elements within the relationship? Furthermore, do all relationships link indi-viduals or events in analogous ways? Causality and spatio-temporal distance, for example, seem to be distinct enough to suggest that a metaphysics of one could not hold for the other.

1.1.8 Possibilities and NecessitiesThe method with which we conceptualize the structure of the world is crucial for how we operate within it. The ideas that we have saved for last are, per-haps, from this perspective, the most important. We are talking about the pos-sible and the necessary, which are technically called alethic modalities. The term modality is used because a modal expression characterizes the mode of existence of the entities to which the expressions it applies to refer. Let us consider, for example, the utterance Rain and its variants: Today: it rains; In Manhattan: it rains; I believe that: it rains It is (morally) good that: it rains; Necessarily: it rains; Possibly: it rains. Each of these variants expresses a way of being of rain, or rather a way of being of the entity to which Rain refers. The alethic modalities, from the Greek (ltheia) or truth, specify the mode of being true of the entities to which the expressions refer and are applied. Possibility and necessity are alethic modalities. The modality of the possible is used to express the fact that the existence of an entity may come to be; the modality of the necessary is used to express the fact that, no matter what, it will come to be (Cf., infra ch. 4).

Now, the majority of possible entities are not actual; they never concretize themselves in our universe. We are talking about entities with which we can-not have direct experience. I can know that Fido the dog is crossing the street because I am witnessing the scene. I can know that yesterday Fido ate milk and cookies because Elena told me so, and she witnessed the event. But how could I know that Fido could have eaten milk and cookies today too, or what if he ate fish and potatoes instead? Neither I nor anyone else ever witnessed Fidos lunch. Maybe this possibility is pure invention, or a projection of our minds. Or maybe it is an induction, or rather an inference made because of certain empirical data. Might we infer that Fido could have eaten milk and cookies today based on the fact that he ate milk and cookies yesterday? Or, it is a deduction, an inference based on a purely logical reasoning. Could Fido have eaten milk and cookies today because there is no contradiction in this think-ing? These questions raise the problem of possibilitywhat does it mean to


say that a certain situation is possible? Are there metaphysical facts that justify our beliefs about what is possible or necessary?

The problem of possibility is more complex than it appears on first sight. Remaining within its metaphysical aspects, one might ask what is a possible entity? There are eight differing positions here (for details see Borghini 2009). Some refute that alethic modalities express concepts, either because we are not able to truly understand the thing of which we speak (skepticism), or because what is really in question here

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