Quodlibeta 2024/2025

Conceptual Engineering, Language Use, and the Neutral Implementation Challenge

Conceptual engineering projects have been targeted by the so-called “implementation challenge”, which calls for an account of how it is possible to change meanings, given that we have no control over the complex ways in which meaning supervenes (for example) on patterns of use. In the first part of this talk, this supervenience-based formulation of the challenge is questioned, and a new formulation is proposed, which strives to be as metasemantically neutral as possible. The new challenge is called “the uptake problem”, and its theoretical advantages are defended over those of the supervenience-based version. In the second part of the talk, a response to the uptake problem is outlined. This will involve reflecting on the notion of control, and especially on aspects that pertain to its gradability and relativity to an agent’s goals. The aim is to put into proper perspective, and ultimately question, the threat posed by (this version of) the implementation challenge.

Two problems for the democratic inclusion of animals

With the advent of the political turn in animal ethics, it was argued that sentient nonhuman animals (henceforth: animals) not only matter morally, but also politically. In my talk, I address two problems that emerge if one accepts certain premises of the political turn literature: The Conflict Problem, and the Numbers Problem. According to the Numbers Problem, animals outnumber humans by far; therefore, humans may ultimately always lose out in the political process if their interests are balanced against animals’ interests. According to the Conflict Problem, the interests of animals (and humans) can be in conflict: wild animals predate on each other or on domesticated animals, or animals and humans depend on the very same natural resources to flourish (e.g., territory, food). In turn, this raises the question whose interests should be defended during political deliberations. I sketch different solutions to these two problems and show why many of them ultimately fail.

Aristotle on Substance: Some Issues in the Central Books of the Metaphysics.

One influential reading of Metaphysics Z.1: 1028a10-13 involves two major assumptions:

[A] There is one and only one type of entity which is both a this [tode ti] and is referred to in answering the ‘what is it?’ [‘ti esti’] question]

[B] For all x [x is a this [tode ti] IFF x is a primary subject of predication [primary substance] in the Categories]

Frede and Patzig and Irwin (for example) make both assumptions. Even those who, like Owen and Burnyeat, reject [B] accept [A]. All agree that Aristotle’s main aim in Metaphysics Z (and perhaps in H and Θ) is to look for the unique type of entity demarcated by [A]. This is sometimes called primary being (ousia).

I shall critically examine and give reasons to reject both exegetical assumptions and suggest an alternative way to conceive of the project Aristotle set up in Metaphysics Z.1.

It consists, I shall argue, in addressing two fundamental questions:

(i) What are the substances understood as this somethings? What type of entity are they? Are they confined to the primary subjects of the Categories? and

(ii) What are the substances referred to in answering the ‘what is it?’ question? What type of entity are they? What conditions have to be met in answering the ‘what is it? question?

I shall outline Aristotle’s approach to answering these two questions and examine some of the philosophical difficulties he encountered in doing so. It is only after doing so that we can see how he might have answered a third question: 

(iii) How are the substances which are this somethings related to those referred to in answering the ‘what is it?’ question? 

Artifacts, Works of Art, and Institutions: Towards a Unified Account?