Beyond Necessity

Is number a property of an aggregate of things? But what is an aggregate? Can the very same things have the same number once disaggregated...

The Maverick Philosopher is agonising about number and existence in this post . It would be simpler if we returned to the original text of ...

I have been looking at ‘Van Inwagen on Fiction, Existence, Properties, Particulars, and Method’, by Bill Vallicella ( Studia Neoaristotelic...

In a post today , Maverick Bill talks about fictional and incomplete objects again, which reminds me of an idea that originally occurred to ...

IN his latest post on ‘pure ficta’, Arizona Bill wheels out what looks like an argument from revelation. If Ed denies that there are me...

Arizona Bill has some more ideas about modes of being here , so we can pick up where we left off last year (see modes of being of hobbits )....

Someone asked me what I thought of this post by the Maverick, about the ‘mode of being’ of holes. No thoughts, really, as I don’t know muc...

The Maverick has argued (in effect) that the meaning of the word 'exist' is an open question. However, if the meaning of 'exist...

In an earlier post , the Maverick extensively quotes the novelist Jean-Paul Sartre, intending to illustrate the "Continental" view...

I go away for a week or two and look what happens . Discussing the Maverick's post on number and existence, and Brandon's comment ,...

There is progress , so much so that I mostly need to report it, rather than make it happen. Maverick concedes the points I made here . He ...

The Maverick has said a bit more about his conception of metaphysical circularity in a post about Plato's Euthyphro Dilemma . Do the go...

Following my post on my return from sunny Greece, the Maverick now has finally conceded that the 'thin' definition of 'exists...

Back in the rain-drenched UK.  Returning seems like entering a room with a low, darkened ceiling (I was in sun-drenched Greece, not far from...

A post yesterday by the Maverick which is 'guaranteed to get London Ed's goat'. The argument he alludes to can be summarised as...

Maverick quotes John Locke (great English philosopher and father of the American constitution) on the impossibility of two beginnings of ex...

Maverick repeats his circularity argument, which boils down to this: (*) If concept F is instantiated, then it is instantiated by an indi...

Maverick asked me the other day what connection could possibly be between the theory of direct reference and existence. Well, there is certa...

Sometimes I ponder on the possibility of being born again into a different existence, without any memory (if materialism is correct) of my p...

Yesterday we looked at the argument from descent to singulars.  There are two ways of descent, depending on whether we take the right hand ...