The alien paradox

Tugby, Matthew

doi:10.1093/analys/anu113

Cited by 11 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…However, if the dispositions of this world are unable to bring about such a thing, then being a unicorn is a super-alien property and impossible. Some will no doubt be unhappy with such a consequence since they wish to allow for such super-alien possibilities, and thereby a greater range of metaphysical possibilities (Tugby, 2015). Yet why should we allow for them?…”

Section: Necessary Property Instantiationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fine-Tuned of Necessity?

Page¹

2018

Res Phil.

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This paper seeks to explicate and analyse an alternative response to fine-tuning arguments from those that are typically given, namely, design or brute contingency. The response I explore is based on necessity, the necessitarian response. After showing how necessity blocks the argument, I explicate the reply I claim necessitarians can give, and suggest how its three requirements can be met. Firstly that laws are metaphysically necessary, secondly that constants are metaphysically necessary, and thirdly that the fundamental properties which determine the laws and constants are necessary. After discussing each in turn, I end the paper by assessing how the response fares when running the fine-tuning argument in two ways, as an inference to best explanation and as a Bayesian argument. Fine-tuning arguments for theism generally run as follows. 2 First, we are told that in order for life to exist, very precise laws of nature, constants of nature, and initial conditions are required, 3 without which life would be impossible. 4 Advocates then contend that design is the best explanation or most likely hypothesis for these requirements being met as opposed to alternatives. Collins, the most prominent contemporary advocate, canvasses one alternative, brute contingency, where this answer takes two forms, either a "naturalistic single-universe hypothesis … the existence of which is an unexplained, brute given", or the "naturalistic multiverse hypothesis" (2009, 204). 5 I would like to avoid brute contingency responses to the 6 The necessitarian response could also come in a multi-verse variety, and this may cause distinct problems for the argument not addressed here since I focus on a single-universe account. 7 They are therefore necessary in a de re rather than de dicto sense. 8 Oppy (2013a; 2013b) thinks a similar move can be made against certain cosmological arguments, see Leftow (2017) for a reply; some of the comments made by Leftow would also be applicable to the necessitarian picture examined in this paper. 9 Namely the necessity of the initial quantity and place of properties.

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Section: Necessary Property Instantiationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fine-Tuned of Necessity?

Page¹

2018

Res Phil.

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“…DE seems to go hand in hand with a realist conception of properties as irreducible property universals or tropes. Moreover, there are reasons to think that the ontological commitment of DE goes even deeper: Virtually all the accounts of DE in the literature are based on a universals-account of properties, and it has been argued that DE is incompatible with both trope views (Tugby 2013 ) and Aristotelian views of universals (Dumsday 2013 ; Tugby 2013 , 2015 ; Yates 2016 ). If these arguments were sound, this would leave the Platonist view of universals as the sole option—a view that many people in the debate on natural modality find hard to swallow.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nominalist dispositional essentialism

Vogt

2022

Synthese

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Dispositional Essentialism, as commonly conceived, consists in the claims that at least some of the fundamental properties essentially confer certain causal-nomological roles on their bearers, and that these properties give rise to the natural modalities. As such, the view is generally taken to be committed to a realist conception of properties as either universals or tropes, and to be thus incompatible with nominalism as understood in the strict sense. Pace this common assumption of the ontological import of Dispositional Essentialism, the aim of this paper is to explore a nominalist version of the view, Austere Nominalist Dispositional Essentialism. The core features of the proposed account are that it eschews all kinds of properties (be they universals, tropes, or sets of particulars), takes certain predicative truths as fundamental, and employs the so-called generic notion of essence. As I will argue, the account is significantly closer to the core idea behind Dispositional Essentialism than the only nominalist account in the vicinity of Dispositional Essentialism that has been offered so far—Ann Whittle’s (2009) Causal Nominalism—and is immune to crucial problems that affect this view.

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A Panenmenalist Approach to Molyneux’s Problem and Some Empirical Findings

Gilead

2020

Synthese Library

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The alien paradox

Cited by 11 publications

References 9 publications

Fine-Tuned of Necessity?

Fine-Tuned of Necessity?

Nominalist dispositional essentialism

A Panenmenalist Approach to Molyneux’s Problem and Some Empirical Findings

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