Aristotle's defense of Dunamis -- Power and potentiality -- Rational and nonrational powers -- The priority of actuality -- Ontological hierarchy, normativity, and gender.

The paper lays out an ontological enquiry into the ways of ‘being of equipment’ as analysed by Heidegger and its role in understanding the design process. Equipments are things that make up our world. It is hard to imagine living without things because our existence is thingly textured. Heidegger’s analytics of equipment far exceeds the ontic sense of things. The argument is that there is a danger when designers limit themselves with the ontic understanding of equipment. Such an (...) understanding coaxes us to believe in the half-baked truth about equipment- an isolated instance of a piece of artifact and leave us ignorant of the equipment's character as a part of an equipment structure. An ontological reflection on equipment brings forth its relational nature and can be rewarding in several ways in improving its design process. (shrink)

This article is concerned with the question of the relative priority between political and social ontology within left-Heideggerianism, a tradition recently reconstructed by Oliver Marchart. Although the title seems to imply that this question is an open and live one within left-Heideggerianism – that the two paths at the crossroads have been clearly delineated when, in fact, the current predicament of left-Heideggerianism resembles more a one-way street – this is somewhat misleading: the identification of left-Heideggerianism with a post-foundationalist political ontology (...) that enjoys systematic priority over the social has contributed to the suppression of the question of the Being of the social and, therefore, prevented a critical re-examination of its relationship to the political. The aim of this article is both modest and ambitious: modest, in that it merely seeks to pose and motivate the question of the social within left-Heideggerianism both at an exegetical and at a systematic level; ambiti... (shrink)

There are many kinds of beings – stones, persons, artifacts, numbers, propositions – but are there also many kinds of being? The world contains a variety of objects, each of which exists – but do some objects exist in different ways? The historically popular answer is yes. This answer is suggested by the Aristotelian slogan that “being is said in many ways”, and according to some interpretations is Aristotle’s view.1 Variants of this slogan were championed by (...) medieval philosophers, such as Aquinas, who worried that God cannot be said to exist in the same sense (or in the same way?) as created things.2 Descartes alluded to the medievals’ worry, but extensive discussion of the problem of being disappeared from the central stage by the time of the modern period.3 However, in the early 20th century, friends of ways of being included Alexius Meinong (1910: 49- 62), G.E. Moore (1903: 161-163), Russell (1912: 91-100), Husserl (1901: 249-250), and Heidegger (1927).4 In what follows, I develop a meta-ontological theory based on the work of Martin Heidegger circa Being and Time. I take Heidegger’s work as my inspiration because of the historical importance of Heidegger’s philosophy, and because Heidegger provides a particularly clear statement of the doctrine that there are many ways to be. I begin by carefully discussing and then formulating the relevant aspects of Heidegger’s metaontological theory. Heidegger claims both that the word “being” has many meanings and that there are different ways in which things exist. Section 2 explicates the former thesis, as well as elucidates the connection between senses of “being” and quantification. Most contemporary analytic metaphysicians believe that the idea that different kinds of beings can enjoy different ways of being is metaphysically bankrupt, and probably even meaningless.5 They are mistaken. In section 3, I discuss the doctrine that there are ways of being, and show how we can understand this doctrine in terms of the meta-ontological framework defended by Theodore Sider.. (shrink)

Ontological pluralism is the view that there are ways of being. Ontological pluralism is enjoying a revival in contemporary metaphysics. We want to say that there are numbers, fictional characters, impossible things, and holes. But, we don’t think these things all exist in the same sense as cars and human beings. If they exist or have being at all, then they have different ways of being. Fictional characters exist as objects of make‐believe and holes exist (...) as absences in objects. But, human beings and cars exist in a much more robust sense. What are ways of being? Why should be believe in them and what should we believe about them? This short essay provides an overview of the recent revival of ways of being and explores some of the surrounding issues. (shrink)

Ontological monists hold that there is only one way of being, while ontological pluralists hold that there are many; for example, concrete objects like tables and chairs exist in a different way from abstract objects like numbers and sets. Correspondingly, the monist will want the familiar existential quantifier as a primitive logical constant, whereas the pluralist will want distinct ones, such as for abstract and concrete existence. In this paper, we consider how the debate between the monist and pluralist (...) relates to the standard test for logicality. We deploy this test and show that it favors the monist. (shrink)

The practice of generalist medicine differs from the practice of other clinical disciplines. We postulate that the application of ethics in generalist practice similarly differs from its application in other healthcare settings. In contrast to the problem- focused practice of ethics in other medical specialties, the practice of ethics in generalist medicine blends habits of mind with behaviors applied routinely over time—an ethical way of being. Using a graphic summary and tabular matrix, we present five “T” habits of mind (...) (time, talk, tact, touch, and trust), associate them with applicable practice characteristics, and link them to observable clinician behaviors to demonstrate how the application of ethics in generalist practice is a day-to-day endeavor and not simply a means to resolve episodic conflicts. We textually review key aspects of the matrix and present two case studies that illustrate how such habits of mind and practice behaviors inform the ethical way of being we espouse. We invite generalist practitioners to incorporate the five “T” habits and associated behaviors into their daily care of patients, and we encourage clinical ethicists and other clinical faculty members to consider using them as a model for ethics education with medical students and resident physicians. (shrink)

There are different ways to be. This paper explicates and defends this controversial thesis. Special attention is given to the meta-ontology of Martin Heidegger. -/- .

In Heidegger's Way of Being, the follow-up to his 2010 book, Engaging Heidegger, Richard Capobianco makes the case clearly and compellingly that the core matter of Heidegger's lifetime of thought was Being as the temporal emergence of all beings and things. Drawing upon a wide variety of texts, many of which have been previously untranslated, Capobianco illuminates the overarching importance of Being as radiant manifestation - "the truth of Being" - and how Heidegger also named and (...) elucidated this fundamental phenomenon as physis, Aletheia, the primordial Logos, and as Ereignis, Lichtung, and Es gibt. Heidegger's Way of Being brings back into full view the originality and distinctiveness of Heidegger's thought and offers an emphatic rejoinder to certain more recent readings, and particularly those that propose a reduction of Being to "sense" or "meaning" and maintain that the core matter is human meaning-making. Capobianco's vivid and often poetic reflections serve to evoke for readers the very experience of Being - or as he prefers to name it, the Being-way - and to invite us to pause and meditate on the manner of our human way in relation to the Being-way. (shrink)

I critically discuss two kinds of argument in favour of ontological pluralism and argue that they fail to show that ways of being are explanatorily fruitful.

This article offers an interpretation of anming 安命 or "being at peace with fate" in the Zhuangzi that highlights its heterogeneous understanding and usage throughout the text. To do so, it focuses on two main approaches to anming in the Zhuangzi 《 莊子》. The first approach emphasizes our relationship with the forces of the cosmos, which have no regard for our values or preferences, and encourages us to clearly understand these forces, to adopt an attitude of peace or serenity (...) toward them, and to obey them willingly. The second approach relies on a normative conception of our individual nature that independently gives us reason to obey our own natural tendencies and respect those of others. Although each approach differs in terms of focus, both offer powerful philosophical resources for being at peace with our fate and nature. (shrink)

The purpose of professional education programs is to prepare aspiring professionals for the challenges of practice within a particular profession. These programs typically seek to ensure the acquisition of necessary knowledge and skills, as well as providing opportunities for their application. While not denying the importance of knowledge and skills, this paper reconfigures professional education as a process of becoming. Learning to become a professional involves not only what we know and can do, but also who we are (becoming). It (...) involves integration of knowing, acting, and being in the form of professional ways of being that unfold over time. When a professional education program focuses on the acquisition and application of knowledge and skills, it falls short of facilitating their integration into professional ways of being. In addition, through such a focus on epistemology (or theory of knowing), ontology (or theory of being) is overlooked. This paper explores what it means to develop professional ways of being where the focus is becoming, not simply knowing as an end in itself. (shrink)

This paper develops a probabilistic analysis of conditionals which hinges on a quantitative measure of evidential support. In order to spell out the interpreta- tion of ‘if’ suggested, we will compare it with two more familiar interpretations, the suppositional interpretation and the strict interpretation, within a formal framework which rests on fairly uncontroversial assumptions. As it will emerge, each of the three interpretations considered exhibits specific logical features that deserve separate consideration.

Explanation of cognition as a special way of being appears in Aristotle without traceable ancestry. Earlier, in Parmenides and in Empedocles, the notion that cognition is somehow equated with the physical constitution of the knower at any given moment had been put forward. But the now rather enigmatic fragments of those thinkers fail to show how this notion foreshadowed any new kind of being over and above the physical. In fact, would it not seem incongruous to use the (...) term “being” for something proposed by them in terms of change? ·. (shrink)

Ways of Being Free: Introduction -- War Is Everything's Father: History and Death as Causes of Existential Angst -- Introduction: Causes of Existential Angst -- Change and Changelessness in Midnight's Children -- The Road of Existential Struggle in The Famished Road -- History and the "Nervous Condition" in The English Patient -- Death as a Drive to Meaningful Existence in Midnight's Children -- Becoming Dead-to-the-World in The English Patient -- Ideological Re-appropriation through Death in The Famished Road -- (...) Authenticity -- Authenticity: Introduction -- From Self-Sufficiency to Inoperative Community in The English Patient -- Revolution Revisited in The Famished Road -- From Communalism to the Comic Absurd in Midnight's Children. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the semantics of bare plural I-generics such as ‘Tigers are striped’, ‘Chickens lay eggs’, and ‘Kangaroos live in Australia’. In a series of recent papers, Bernhard Nickel has developed a comprehensive view of a certain class of bare plural I-generics, which he calls characterizing sentences :629–648, 2009. doi:10.1007/s10988-008-9049-7; Linguist Philos 33:479–512, 2010a. doi:10.1007/s10988-011-9087-4; Philos Impr 10:1–25, 2010b). Nickel’s ambitious proposal includes a detailed account of their truth-conditions, an account of certain pragmatic phenomena that they give (...) rise to, a metaphysical picture of their truth-makers in terms of mechanisms, and an epistemological story connecting characterizing sentences to such concepts as induction and explanation. This paper offers an extended critique of the central truth-conditional component of Nickel’s proposal. In a nutshell, his account has it that ‘Tigers are striped’ is true iff, for tigers, there is a way of being normal with respect to fur-pattern such that all tigers that are normal that way are striped. I begin by explaining what characterizing sentences are and distinguish several readings that are available for sentences with bare plurals in subject position. I then introduce Nickel’s account and discuss some of its predictions which, in my view, seem highly problematic. Moreover, I argue that Nickel’s principle of Homogeneity does not go together well with his proposed truth-conditions, and that his truth-conditional account violates a plausible principle about the logic of generics, a principle I call generic non-contradiction. (shrink)

This article reports a study exploring the meaning of the complex phenomenon of moral responsibility in nursing practice. Each of three focus groups with a total of 14 student nurses were conducted twice to gather their views on moral responsibility in nursing practice. The data were analysed by qualitative thematic content analysis. Moral responsibility was interpreted as a relational way of being, which involved guidance by one’s inner compass composed of ideals, values and knowledge that translate into a striving (...) to do good. It was concluded that, if student nurses are to continue striving to do good in a way that respects themselves and other people, it is important that they do not feel forced to compromise their values. Instead they should be given space and encouragement in their endeavours to do good in a relational way that advances nursing as a moral practice. (shrink)

Ontological pluralism is the view that there are ways of being. In this paper, we build a new case for ontological pluralism in the form of three contributions: (1) We offer a theoretically useful definition of ‘way of being’ as a positive principle of similarity and difference that is distinct from—and a prior condition for—having properties. (2) We develop a test for distinguishing ways of being from properties: features of entities that are conceptually redundant when (...) represented as predicates in standard predicate logic are ways of being. Finally, (3) we argue that there are ways of being, i.e., there are features of entities that satisfy the definition in (1), and pass the test outlined in (2). Along the way, we reply to objections against pluralism raised by Peter van Inwagen and Wouter Cohen, in an attempt to show that pluralism is well-motivated. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 63, Issue 1, pp 64 - 86 Five times in the extant corpus, Aristotle refers to a distinction between two ways of being a ‘that for the sake of which’ that he sometimes marks by using genitive and dative pronouns. Commentators almost universally say that this is the distinction between an aim and beneficiary. I propose that Aristotle had a quite different distinction in mind, namely: that which holds between something and the aim or objective (...) it is in the business of producing or achieving, and that which holds between some instrument and the user of that instrument. (shrink)

_Ways of Being in the World_ is an anthology of the Indigenous philosophical thought of communities across Turtle Island, offering readings on a variety of topics spanning many times and geographic locations. It was created especially to meet the needs of instructors who want to add Indigenous philosophy to their courses but are unsure where to begin—as well as for students, Indigenous or otherwise, who wish to broaden their horizons with materials not found in the typical philosophy course. This (...) collection is an invitation to embark on a relationship with Indigenous peoples through the introduction of their unique philosophies. (shrink)

There are many ways for truths to be true. How should we understand that idea? One is that there are different kinds of truth: the _ways_ are different truth-like properties. Another understanding is that a truth can be made true in different ways, by different kinds of entities. The former understanding supports alethic pluralism. But the latter can be understood as a kind of monism: truth is the existential property of having some truthmaker or other. On this view, (...) the differences reside in how a truth is made true, but not in its being true. I’ll discuss how these two understandings differ and what the potential advantages of the latter idea might be. (shrink)

(written in 2017) According to Dorothea Debus (2007), all emotional aspects related to an act of remembering are present and new emotional responses to the remembered past event. This is a common conception of the nature of the emotional aspect of personal memories, if not explicitly defended then at least implicitly accepted in the literature. In this article, I first criticize Debus’ arguments and demonstrate that she does not give us valid reasons to believe that all the emotional aspects related (...) to a memory are present and new emotional responses to that past event. I then criticize Debus’ thesis tout court for being a direct consequence of assuming a particular conceptualization of the nature of emotions: emotions as physiological changes. Finally, based on a different conceptualization of emotions that focuses on their relational nature, I propose an alternative framework for analyzing the different possible emotional aspects of our personal memories. This leads me to conclude, contrary to Debus, that some emotional aspects of our memories are not occurrent emotions but are better conceived as quasi-emotions. (shrink)

Monism about being says that there is one way to be. Pluralism about being says that there are many ways to be. Recently, Trenton Merricks and David Builes have offered arguments against Pluralism. In this paper, I show how Pluralists who appeal to the relative naturalness of quantifiers can respond to these arguments.

I am interested in fear of non-existence, which is often discussed in terms of fear one’s own death, or as it is sometimes called, fear of death as such. This form of fear has been denied by some philosophers. Cognitive theories of the emotions have particular trouble in dealing with it, granting it a status that is simultaneously paradigmatic yet anomalous with respect to fear in general. My paper documents these matters, and considers a number of responses. I provide examples (...) from philosophy and literature of fear of non-existence, and distinguish it from other death-related fears. I then look at the success that cognitive theories of the emotions have had in dealing with other “problematic” fears, such as phobias, and examine how the solutions here fail to apply to fear of non-existence. The problem lies with the perceptual-centred model of fear that is typically called upon. Against this I recommend a retreat to a belief-centred model for fear of non-existence. I argue that there are other fears that are better explained by a belief-centred rather a perceptual-based approach. This reinforces the plausibility of the belief-centred model, and goes some way to alleviating the anomalous and problematic status of the fear of non-existence. (shrink)

This study provides the historical background to, and analysis and translations of, two seminal texts from the medieval Islamic world concerning the univocity of being/existence and a theory of “ambiguous predication” (tashkīk), which is similar to the Thomistic theory of analogy. The disputants are Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (1149–1210), who defended a theory of the univocity of being, and Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (1201–1274), who defended the theory of ambiguous predication. While the purported issue is whether a quiddity can cause (...) its own existence, the debate extends further. Rāzī draws on several arguments that “existence” must be predicated univocally of God and creature and then concludes that, given the univocity of “existence,” God cannot be simple, but is a composite of the divine quiddity and distinct attributes. In contrast, Ṭūsī denies that “existence” is said univocally of God and creature and rather is predicated ambiguously/analogously, and then defends divine simplicity. (shrink)

In many countries grappling with the politics of equal recognition, the experiences, beliefs and reasons for action of people who identify as non-binary are starting to be seen as valid and intelligible.1 And, despite some gender clinics still responding cautiously to requests for non-standard medical interventions, their treatment needs are now recognised in major clinical guidelines. This is the current social context in which Notini and colleagues outline the case of ‘Phoenix’, an 18-year-old birth-assigned woman, who has requested the indefinite (...) continuation of puberty suppression, a treatment that was initiated when the client was 11 years old to mitigate their intense distress at the onset of puberty. Drawing on a conception of health as overall well-being, the authors conclude that OPS is ‘consistent with the proper goals of medicine’, and that there are ‘equity-based reasons’ for offering OPS to adults as a group. They concede that the physical risks are greater for OPS than for hormonal interventions generally provided to people with a binary gender identity. They also acknowledge the need for ‘a fine-grained ethical evaluation of Phoenix’s particular situation’ to assess whether the potential benefits of OPS outweigh the potential harms for this individual. Here I respectfully raise three points to amplify the authors’ discussion. First, there seem to be significant ethical issues of a general, not a particular, kind arising from the type of individual evaluation they call for. Following initial screening for significant mental distress and other major vulnerabilities, the key undertaking …. (shrink)

To address certain seemingly irresolvable conflicts between patients and clinicians regarding treatment plans that are rooted in patients' religious or spiritual beliefs, Kuczewski (2007), in a ref...