2012, 'Photographic Representation and Depiction of Temporal Extension', in Inquiry, Vol.55, No.2, 194–213

Abstract :
The main task of this paper is to understand if and how static images like photographs can represent and/or depict temporal extension (duration). In order to do this, a detour will be necessary to understand some features of the nature of photographic representation and depiction in general. This important detour will enable us to see that photographs (can) have a narrative content, and that the skilled photographer can 'tell a story' in a very clear sense, as well as control and guide the attention of the spectator of the photograph. The understanding and defence of this claim is a secondary aim of this paper, and it will then allow us to provide a good treatment of the particular case of photographic representation and depiction of temporal extension.

2011, 'Endurance, perdurance, and metaontology', in Northern European Journal of Philosophy (Sats), Vol XII, n°2

Abstract :
The recent debate in metaontology gave rise to several types of (more or less classical) answers to questions about "equivalences" between metaphysical theories and to the question whether metaphysical disputes are substantive or merely verbal (i.e. various versions of realism, strong anti-realism, moderate anti-realism, or epistemicism). In this paper, I want to do two things. First, I shall have a close look at one metaphysical debate that has been the target and center of interest of many meta-metaphysicians, namely the problem of how material objects persist through time : the endurantism vs. perdurantism controversy. It has been argued that this debate is a good example of a merely verbal one, where two allegedly competing views are in fact translatable one into each other – they end up, contrary to appearances, to be equivalent. In my closer look at this debate, I will conclude that this is correct, but only to some extent, and that there does remain room for substantive disagreement.
The second thing that I wish to achieve in this paper, and that I hope will stem from my considerations about the persistence debate, is to defend a metaontological view that emphasizes that when asking the question "Are metaphysical debates substantive or verbal?" the correct answer is "It depends." Some debates are substantive, some debates are merely verbal, sometimes it is true that a problem or a question can be formulated in equally good frameworks where there is no fact of the matter as to which one is correct or where we just cannot know it. Furthermore, importantly, as my examination of the persistence debate will show, there is room for the view that a debate is largely merely verbal but not entirely and that some parts of it are substantive, and decidable by philosophical methods. It is possible, and it is the case with respect to the persistence debate, that inside a debate some points are merely verbal while other are places of substantive disagreement. A moral of this is that, at the end of the day, the best way to do meta-metaphysics is to do first-level metaphysics.

2011, 'The relationist and substantivalist theories of time : foes or friends ?', in European Journal of Philosophy

Abstract :
There are two traditionally rival views about the nature of time : substantivalism that takes time to be a substance that exists independently of events located in it, and relationism that takes time to be constructed out of events. In this paper, first, I want to make some progress with respect to the debate between these two views, and I do this mainly by examining the strategies they use to face the possibilities of 'empty time' and 'time without change'. As we shall see, the two allegedly very different rival views are much less different than what we thought : their structure is extremely similar, their strategies are extremely similar, and they can both face the possibilities of 'empty time' and 'time without change' in the same way. Thus, I argue in favour of a certain kind of equivalence between the two views, I discuss a Strong and a Weak version of this claim, and I provide reasons for endorsing the former. I also discuss the parallel between this pair of views about the nature of time and another analogous pair of views : the bundle theory and the substratum theory about the nature of material objects, with respect to the problem with Identity of Indiscernibles.

2011, 'What photographs are (and what they are not)', in Disputatio, Vol.IV, no.31

Abstract :
For the metaphysician, photographs are very puzzling entities indeed. And even from the non-philosopher's intuitive point of view, it is not that clear what sort of thing a photograph is. Typically, if a client wants to purchase a photograph, she can mean very different things by 'buying a photograph' : she can mean to buy a print or a number of prints, or she can mean to buy a negative (when traditional film photographs are concerned) or a file (when digital photography is concerned), or she can mean to buy a right to use a photograph a precisely determined number of times in a number of brochures or on a website, and so on. When facing a new client, I always, without exception, face the problem of explaining to her what it is that she is actually buying – and it is not always clear that she is ever buying a photograph.
As a metaphysician, I face a much more difficult challenge : find out to what ontological category photographs belong to. Are they concrete spatio-temporal entities like prints, are they universals since there can be many 'prints-instances' of a same photograph, are they sets or aggregates of prints, or something even different ? This is the task that I wish to undertake in this paper : examine all plausible metaphysical categories to which photographs could belong to, and see which one is the fittest. As we shall see, in this 'survival for the fittest' competition between traditional metaphysical categories, there will be no real winner : several categories will reveal themselves to be enlightening and useful when describing features of what photographs are, but none will prove to be entirely satisfactory. Photographs, it seems, are a sort of borderline entities that share some but not all aspects of several traditional metaphysical categories. Is it then justified to postulate a new ontological category to which photographs would properly belong ? On mainly methodological grounds, I shall argue that it is not, and I will suggest a different way out of this metaphysician's trouble by defending a nihilism about photographs. To put it bluntly, I will defend the claim that photographs do not exist – but I will also argue that this is not a very revisionary or anti-commonsensical claim.

2011, 'Endurance and time travel', in Kriterion, 24:65-72

Abstract :
Suppose that you travel back in time to talk to your younger self in order to tell her that she (you) should have done some things in her (your) life differently. Of course, you will not be able to make this plan work, we know that from the many versions of 'the grandfather paradox' that populate the philosophical literature about time travel. What will be my centre of interest in this paper is the conversation between you and ... you – i.e. the older you that travelled back in time and the younger you, when you first meet. As we shall see, given this situation, endurantists will have to endorse a strange consequence of their view : you will turn out to be a universal while your properties will turn out to be particulars.

2011, 'Three kinds of realism about photographs', in The Journal of Speculative Philosophy

Abstract :
In this paper, I explore the nature of photographs by comparing them to hand-made paintings, as well as by comparing traditional film photography with digital photography, and I concentrate on the question of realism. Several different notions can be distinguished here. Are photographs such that they depict the world in a 'realist' or a 'factive' way ? Do they show us the world as it is with accuracy and reliability other types of pictures don't posses ? Do they allow us, as some have suggested, to literally see the world through them ? Below, I will distinguish three kinds of realism about photographs, reject two, and partly endorse one. Indeed, the label "realism", when concerning photographs, can stand for a variety of very different claims. The first (and quite obvious) distinction to start with concerns what the realist thesis is about : the claim that somehow photographs are more accurate or more reliable or that they somehow depict the world better than hand-made pictures can be a claim about the photographic image itself or alternatively a claim about the way in which photographs are produced. In the former case, realism is a thesis about how photographs look and what sort of information they contain, while in the latter case realism is a claim about the process of production of photographs. It is the latter claim that is the most discussed in the philosophical literature about photography. I will concentrate on this type of realism, of which I shall examine two varieties.

2011, 'Vagueness : a statistical epistemicist approach', in Teorema, Vol. XXX/3

Abstract :
There are three main traditional accounts of vagueness : the first treats it as a genuinely metaphysical phenomenon, the second as a phenomenon of ignorance, and the third as a linguistic or conceptual phenomenon. In this paper I will briefly present these views, especially the epistemicist and supervaluationist strategies, and shortly point to some well-known problems that burden them. I will then examine a 'statistical epistemicist' account of vagueness that is designed to avoid precisely these problems – it is a view that provides an account of the phenomenon of vagueness as coming from our linguistic practices, while insisting that meaning supervenes on use, and that our use of vague terms does yield sharp and precise meanings, which we ignore, thus allowing bivalence to hold.

2010, 'Relational and substantival ontologies, and the nature and the role of primitives in ontological theories', in Erkenntnis, 73:1

Abstract :
Several metaphysical debates have typically been modeled as oppositions between a relationist approach and a substantivalist approach. Such debates include the Bundle Theory and the Substratum Theory about ordinary material objects, the Bundle (Humean) Theory and the Substance (Cartesian) Theory of the Self, and Relationism and Substantivalism about time. In all three debates, the substantivalist side typically insists that in order to provide a good treatment of the subject-matter of the theory (time, Self, material objects), it is necessary to postulate the existence of a certain kind of substance, while the other side, the relationist one, characteristically feels that this is an unnecessary expense and that one can get the job done in an ontologically cheaper way just with inter-related properties or events.
In this paper I shall defend the view that there is much less of a disagreement between relational ontologies and substantival ontologies than it is usually thought. I believe that, when carefully examined, the two sides of the debate are not that different from each other, in all three cases of pairs of views mentioned above. As we will see, both the relational side and the substantival side work in the same way, suffer from and answer the same objections, and are structurally extremely similar. It will be an important question – one that I shall discuss in detail, and that is indeed the main point of interest for me in this paper – whether this means that the two sides of the debate are somehow 'equivalent' or not, and what 'equivalent' could mean.

2009, 'Presentism and persistence', in Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 90:3

Abstract :
In this paper, I examine various theories of persistence through time under presentism. In Part I, I argue that both perdurantist views (namely, the worm view and the stage view) suffer, in combination with presentism, from serious difficulties and should be rejected. In Part II, I discuss the presentist endurantist view, to see that it does avoid the difficulties of the perdurantist views, and consequently that it does work, but at a price that some may consider as being very high : its ontological commitments to platonic universals and to the substratum theory, that as we shall see follow from the combination of endurantism with presentism, will perhaps not be of everybody's taste.

2009, 'The Self : a Humean bundle and/or a Cartesian substance ?', in European Journal of Analytic Philosophy, Vol.5, No.1

Abstract :
Is the self a substance, as Descartes thought, or is it 'only' a bundle of perceptions, as Hume thought ? In this paper I will examine these two views, especially with respect to two central features that have played a central role in the discussion, both of which can be quickly and usefully explained if one puts them as an objection to the bundle view. First, friends of the substance view have insisted that only if one conceives of the self as a substance is it possible to account for genuine particularity of selves and genuine persistence through time of them. I will discuss in detail this claim as well as a special case of persistence - the case of a fission of a self - and I will ask, as Shoemaker (1997) did, how such a case can be handled by the two competing theories. The second central point of traditional disagreement concerns independence : it is often said that only a substance, but not a mere bundle, is independent enough of its properties to play properly the role of a self, and I will have something to say about this.
Concerning all these points, my thesis will be a meta-theoretical one : contrary to appearances, both views can accommodate all of them (particularity at a time, persistence, fission, independence) in the same way, and I will examine two possible conclusions to be drawn from this : either that the differences between the two views are no more than terminological and that they turn out to be equivalent views, or that the differences are metaphysical but that it is epistemically under-determined which one of the views we should choose.

2009, 'On (not) being in two places at the same time: an argument against endurantism', in American Philosophical Quarterly, 46:3

Abstract :
Is there an entity such that it can be in two places at the same time ? According to one traditional view, properties can, since they are immanent universals. But what about objects such as a person or a table ? Common sense seems to say that, unlike properties, objects are not multiply locatable.
In this paper, I will argue first of all that endurantism entails a consequence that is quite bizarre, namely, that objects are universals, while properties are particulars. I then conclude by examining and rejecting two theories according to which objects can wholly be in two places at the same time.

2009, 'Eternalist theories of persistence through time : where the differences really lie', in Axiomathes, Vol. 19, No. 1

Abstract :
The eternalist endurantist and perdurantist theories of persistence through time come in various versions, namely the two versions of perdurantism : the worm view and the stage view, and the two versions of endurantism : indexicalism and adverbialism. Using as a starting point the instructive case of what is depicted by photographs, I will examine these four views, and compare them, with some interesting results.
Notably, we will see that two traditional enemies – the perdurantist worm view and the endurantist theories – are more like allies : they are much less different than what is usually thought, and some alleged points of central disagreement fall prey to closer scrutiny. The aim of this paper is to examine carefully all those points, and to call attention to the places where the real differences between these views lie.
I will then turn to the perdurantist stage view, and claim that with respect to some central issues it is the view that is the most different from the other three, but that in some places the reason why it different is also the reason why it is less satisfactory.

2008, 'The bundle theory and the substratum theory : deadly enemies or twin brothers ?', in Philosophical Studies, 141:175-190

Abstract :
In this paper, I explore several versions of the bundle theory and the substratum theory and compare them, with the surprising result that it seems to be true that they are equivalent (in a sense of 'equivalent' to be specified). In order to see whether this is correct or not, I go through several steps : first, I examine different versions of the bundle theory with tropes and compare them to the substratum theory with tropes by going through various standard objections and arguing for a tu quoque in all cases. Emphasizing the theoretical role of the substratum and of the relation of compresence, I defend the claim that these views are equivalent for all theoretical purposes. I then examine two different versions of the bundle theory with universals, and show that one of them is, here again, equivalent to the substratum theory with universals, by examining how both views face the famous objection from Identity of Indiscernibles in a completely parallel way. It is only the second, quite extreme and puzzling, version of the bundle theory with universals that is not be equivalent to any other view; and the diagnosis of why this is so will show just how unpalatable the view is. Similarly, only a not-so-palatable version of the substratum theory is genuinely different from the other views; and here again it's precisely what makes it different that makes it less appealing.

2008, 'Two concepts of possible worlds - or only one ?', in Theoria, 74:4

Abstract :
In his "Two concepts of possible worlds", Peter Van Inwagen explores two kinds of views about the nature of possible worlds : abstractionism and concretism. The latter is the view defended by David Lewis who claims that possible worlds are concrete spatio-temporal universes, very much like our own, causally and spatio-temporally disconnected from each other. The former is the view of the majority who claims that possible worlds are some kind of abstract objects – such as propositions, properties, states of affairs, or sets of numbers. In this paper, I will develop this view in an 'extreme abstractionist' way, appealing to a 'modal bundle theory', and I will try to show that it is preferable to the standard abstractionist ones. Finally, I will compare this kind of abstractionism to concretism, only to find that the difference between the two is minimal.

2008, 'There are vague objects (in any sense in which there are ordinary objects)', in Studia Philosophica Estonica, 1.2:200-203

Abstract :
Ordinary objects are vague, because either (i) composition is restricted, or (ii) there really are no such objects (but we still want to talk about them), or (iii) because such objects are not metaphysically (independently of us) distinguishable from other "extra-ordinary" objects. In any sense in which there are ordinary objects, they are vague.

2007, 'On Presentist Perdurantism', in Northern European Journal of Philosophy (Sats), Vol. 8, No.2

Abstract :
The combination of perdurantism and presentism has an alleged nice advantage : it seems to avoid the 'no-change objection' to four-dimensionalism (non-presentist perdurantism). The purpose of this paper is, firstly, to argue that this is not true, and that the 'no-change objection' applies to presentist perdurantism with as much strength as it applies to four-dimensionalism, and secondly, that there are additional difficulties with this view, mainly due to the claim that wholes can have parts that don't exist.

2006, 'A modal bundle theory', in Metaphysica, Vol. 7, No. 2

Abstract :
If ordinary particulars are bundles of properties, and if properties are said to be universals, then three well-known objections arise : no particular can change, all particulars have all of their properties essentially (even the most insignificant ones), and there cannot be two numerically distinct but qualitatively indiscernible particulars. In this paper, I try to make a little headway on these issues and see how the objections can be met, if one accepts a certain view about persistence through time and across possible worlds – namely, four-dimensionalism and its modal analogue. The paper is especially devoted to the second and third of the three objections.

2005, 'Branching versus divergent possible worlds', in Kriterion vol. 19

Abstract :
David Lewis' modal counterpart theory falls prey to the famous Saul Kripke's objection, and this is mostly due to his 'static' ontology (divergence) of possible worlds. This paper examines a genuinely realist but different, branching ontology of possible worlds and a new definition of the counterpart relation, which attempts to provide us with a better account of de re modality, and to meet satisfactorily Kripke's claim, while being also ontologically more 'parsimonious'.