Do truths always have ontological import?

Could there be truths without truth-makers, without truth-bearers, and without any other kind of ontological footprint? In other words, could there be truths in a possible world that lacks concrete objects and that also lacks abstract objects such as universals and propositions?

Sums of Things

Let's talk about sums of things. Or more specifically, let's talk about their ontology. There are three options with respect to the ontological status of sums. First, one may say that sums do not exist. There are no sums. There is no such thing as the sum of A, B and C. What exists is just A, B and C separately. Nothing more and nothing less. Alternatively one may hold that the sum of A, B and C does exist but is nothing more than A, B and C taken together. The sum of A, B and C is nothing over and beyond A, B and C considered as a whole. The sum is identical to these three objects counted as one. Finally, one may hold that the sum is more than just A, B and C taken together. But what does this surplus, this "more", consist in? It's the togetherness hypostatized. It's the act of taking them together that has ontological import.

The chair-cabinet

Consider a room that contains a chair, an empty table and an empty cabinet. Suppose that this list of things offers a complete description of what there is to be seen in the room. Imagine that you enter it. You look around and you see nothing more but those three things. Would it be possible for you to create a new material object in this room merely by looking around and using language? Such a verbal creatio ex nihilo obviously seems metaphysically impossible. Nevertheless, look intensively at the chair and the cabinet at the same time. Focus your attention on them as being together. While doing so introduce the word 'chair-cabinet' and fix it's reference by declaring that it refers to the chair and cabinet together. After this act of naming the context has changed. For it seems not unreasonable anymore to hold that the room now also contains a chair-cabinet that has the chair and the cabinet as its material parts. Here we have an example of an act that perhaps resembles to at least some extent an act of verbally creating something out of nothing.

Grounding the firm

Recently I gave a lecture entitled Grounding the firm for a business organization on strategy, identity and morality. In the version that is available on my website I have anonymized the name of the firm in question.

From Carnap and Quine to Hilary Putnam

Today I gave a lecture at the VU on Hilary Putnam's deflationary account of metaphysics. I discussed Putnam's position within the context of the mid-twentieth century debate on the status of ontology between Rudolf Carnap, the chief architect of logical positivism, and Willard Van Orman Quine. The slides are available on my website.

A renewed first cause argument (revised)

In the last few weeks I received helpful comments on my paper titled 'A Renewed Argument for the Existence of a First Cause'. This resulted in a revised version of my paper that is now again online available on my website.

In this paper I propose a renewed argument for the existence of a first cause, i.e. something uncaused from which all causal series eventually proceed. More specifically, I show that under some very general and sufficiently plausible conditions (regarding the nature of causation and mereological parthood) the existence of a first cause logically follows.

The paper starts with a discussion of the problems associated with two traditional paradigmatic first cause arguments, derived from Aquinas and Leibniz. It is shown that the proposed renewed argument does not face any of these problems.

The renewed argument does also not depend on the principle of sufficient reason, that is, it does not assume that there is an explanation of every truth. In fact, it does not depend on any of the weaker or restricted versions of this principle either, such as those proposed by Craig, Koons and Pruss.

Moreover, the argument does not rely on the much debated concepts of metaphysical or broadly logical possibility and necessity. It does not refer to these modal concepts at all.

A renewed first cause argument (preprint)

A preprint version of my academic paper titled 'A Renewed Argument for the Existence of a First Cause' is now online available on my website.

The article is intended for publication in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Comments on the preprint are highly appreciated.