The Metaphysics of Opacity
Year: 2022
Type: article
Abstract: This paper examines the logical and metaphysical consequences of denying Leibniz's Law, the principle that if t1= t2, then φ(t1) if and only if φ(t2). Recently, Caie, Goodman, and Lederman (2020) and Bacon and Russell (2019) have proposed sophisticated logical systems permitting violations of Leibniz's Law. We show that their systems conflict with widely held, attractive principles concerning the metaphysics of individuals. Only by adopting a highly revisionary picture, on which there is no finest-grained equivalence relation, can a well-motivated metaphysics for rejecting Leibniz's Law be developed. We sketch one such picture—a metaphysics of stuff. Stuff ontologies can be initially motivated through ordinary language: stuff stands to mass nouns as objects stand to count nouns. The stuff ontology we propose takes stuff to be fundamental and views the world as composed of an infinite descending hierarchy of kinds and portions of stuff. We defend the coherence of this picture and offer a model theory demonstrating that it can be consistently formalized.
Source: Philosophers Imprint
DOI: 10.3998/phimp.3189
Authors: Catharine Diehl, Beau Madison Mount
Institutions: Leiden University, University of Konstanz
Language: English
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4288678309