Metafysik Flashcards
Abundant ontology
an ontology that posits a relatively large number of types of entities.
Abundant theory of universals (or properties)
a version of realism about universals (or properties) that posits a relatively large number of distinct universals (or properties); in the extreme case, a universal (or property) corresponding to any term that is applied to a multiplicity of entities.
Actualism
the view that everything that exists actually exists, nothing is merely possible.
A-features
tensed features of events such as their happening in the past, present, or future.
Agent causation
the view that human agents are sometimes causes.
Alexander’s dictum
the entities that exist are all and only those that possess causal powers.
A-series
an ordering of events in terms of their being past (or more past), present, or future (or more future).
A-theory of time
the view that the A-facts are not reducible to the Bfacts.
B-features
tenseless yet temporal features of events, e.g. one event’s happening five years before or after another.
Block universe view
the combination of the B-theory of time and eternalism.
Brutal composition
the view that there is no true, interesting, and finite answer to the Special Composition Question.
B-series
an ordering of events in terms of their dates and times and permanent relations of being earlier than, later than, and simultaneous with each other.
B-theory of time
the view that the A-facts of time are reducible to the B-facts.
Categorical features
features that just concern what an object is like actually in itself at a certain time.
Class nominalism
the view that properties are to be identified with the classes of objects that instantiate them.
Compatibilism
the view that free will is compatible with determinism.
Conceptualism
the view that universals exist, however they are entities that depend on our mind’s grasp of them.
Contingent
what is neither necessary nor impossible.
Conventionalism
a position that seeks to reduce modal claims to facts about what follows or does not follow from the conventions of our language.
Conventionalism
a position that seeks to reduce modal claims to facts about what follows or does not follow from the conventions of our language.
Counterfactual
a conditional asserting what would have been the case had things gone differently than how we suppose they actually go.
Counterfactual theory of causation
a theory that reduces facts about causation to facts about what would have happened in various counterfactual circumstances.
De dicto modality
concerns the modal status of propositions (or dictums), whether they are possible, necessary, or contingent.
De re modality
concerns the modal status of features of individuals, such as whether a certain feature of an individual is essential or contingent.
Determinism
the position that the laws are such that given any state of the universe, one can use them to predict with certainty what the state of the universe will be at any other time.
Diachronic identity
identity over time.
Dispositional features
features about how an object might behave in various situations.
Efficient cause
what brings an object or event into being.
Endurantism
the view that what persistence amounts to is strict numerical identity over time.
Epiphenomenon
an event that is the result of another event but that has no effects of its own.
Epistemicism
the view that vagueness is ignorance; it is not a matter of fundamental indeterminacy in the world or indeterminacy in what our words or concepts apply to, but our ignorance about what our words or concepts apply to.
Epistemic possibility
something that is compatible with everything that one knows.
Ersatz modal realism
the view that there are possible worlds (worlds that can play a similar role to the concrete worlds of the modal realist), but that these are not additional universes in the same sense as our universe.
Essentialism
the view that objects themselves, independently of any ways we may categorize them, have certain properties necessarily.
Essential properties (essences)
properties that hold of an individual by necessity that make them the kinds of things they are.
Eternalism
the view that past, present, and future objects and events are equally real.
Exdurantism (the stage view)
identifies the familiar material objects we ordinarily think of as persisting with temporary stages.
Existentialism
the view that it is the kind of things we do that determines our essences, the kind of people we are. We do not possess innate essences that determine who we are and what we will do.
External time
distinguished from personal time in David Lewis’s account of time travel, it is time itself.
Fictionalism
what is required for the truth of sentences in a given domain is to be understood by analogy with truths of fiction.
Final cause
the purpose or goal for which an object exists or why it is the way it is at a given time.
Forms
the universals that constitute the fundamental entities of Plato’s ontology.
Four dimensionalism
the doctrine of temporal parts, the view that in addition to spatial parts, objects have temporal parts.
Framework (Carnapian)
a linguistic system including rules of grammar and meaning.
Frankfurt case
a case in which intuitively one acts freely and so is morally responsible for an action, and yet one did not have the ability to do otherwise.
Grounding
the relation that one set of facts bears to another set of facts when the one metaphysically explains the other.
Growing block theory
the view that past and present objects and events are real; future objects and events are not.
Hard determinism
the view that free will is incompatible with determinism and so human beings lack free will.
Hard incompatibilism
the view that free will is incompatible with both determinism and indeterminism and so free will is impossible.
Humeanism about laws
the view that the facts about the laws of nature are reducible to facts about regularities in what happens in our universe.
Hylomorphism
the Aristotelian view that substances are complex objects made of both matter (hyle) and form (morphe¯).
Identity of Indiscernibles
a metaphysical principle stating that necessarily, if any objects are qualitative duplicates, then they are identical.
Immanent
an entity that is located in space and time, where it is instantiated.
Incompatibilism
the view that free will is incompatible with determinism.
Indeterminism
the denial of determinism.
Indispensability argument
an argument for realism (Platonism) about mathematical entities from the premises that (1) we should be committed to all and only the entities that are indispensable to our best scientific theories, and (2) the claim that mathematical entities are indispensable to our best scientific theories.
Instantiation
the relation between a property and an entity that has that property.