AAP 2026 CONFERENCE

Debunking arguments aim to show that our beliefs do not track the world, by identifying a certain etiology that confers negative epistemic status to our beliefs. For instance, we believe that murder is wrong. Debunker comes in by stating that we have such a belief because we evolved to belief that murder is wrong given that it is maladaptive. Since that is the case, our moral beliefs do not stand for moral facts. In this paper I aim to put forward a novel type of debunking arguments—the one that pertains to identity. Roughly, I claim that we have intuitions about what makes objects different from other objects and that such intuitions can be debunked. The first intuition—the unity intuition—states that we think that objects are singular if they have enough unity. The second intuition—the spatial boundary intuition—states that we think that objects are singular up to the point where they meet unoccupied space. The claim is that, analogously to a moral case, we evolved to have such intuitions which makes them epistemically problematic. If it weren’t for evolution, we wouldn’t think that objects are singular, nor we would have intuitions about what makes them singular. The upshot is that we have a reason to suspend or reduce credence to our beliefs about identity.

I explore the metaphor of "nothing-over-and-aboveness" and the ontological "free lunch" as it features in neo-Aristotelian and Quinean approaches to ontology. The main question I consider is how should we cash out such talk. Does it track a metaphysically significant relation, or does it simply indicate a lack of ontological commitment? For instance, some metaphysicians, such as Jonathan Schaffer and Karen Bennett, have used grounding relations and explanation to argue that their ontologies are more parsimonious. There appear to be a range of relata and relations that may license such talk. For example, the aforementioned grounding relations, reduction, and identity relations, along with fundamentalia and derivata. I will also consider how the theory virtue of parsimony features in cases from metaphysics as compared to how it features in scientific practice. Finally, I defend the view that there may be no ontologically innocent entities, in line with a Quinean approach to ontology.

Was there any event in human history whose occurrence was inevitable? Mainstream theories roughly follow Ben-Menahem’s sensitivity principle, stating that the necessity/contingency of a historical event depends on its degree of sensitivity to the initial conditions of its occurrence. In contrast, I propose to account for historical inevitability using the idea of a (metaphysical) causal sufficient condition. It provides a new theoretical framework and an empirical methodology. The obtainment of a set of events within the target event’s initial conditions, whose types constitute one configuration of the causal sufficient condition(s) of the event type to which the target event belongs, leads to its inevitable occurrence. That is, a historical event token occurred inevitably once a configuration of its causal sufficient condition was realised. Section I briefly illustrates the proposed account. Section II elaborates on explicating historical inevitability by causal sufficient and necessary conditions. Section III draws on interventionist counterfactual analysis to delve deeper into the causal and formal aspects of causal sufficient (and necessary) conditions. Section IV explores an empirical methodology especially suitable for studying the inevitable occurrences in human history. It utilises interventionist ideas to explain the formation of hypotheses of causal sufficient and necessary conditions for applicable historical event types.

In classical extensional mereology, it is provable that if there are no Fs, then the universe is the general product of the Fs. For example, if there are no unicorns, then the universe is the general product of the unicorns. This paper argues that the source of this counterintuitive theorem lies not in classical extensional mereology itself, but in the classical treatment of restricted existential quantification, according to which if there are no Fs, then all Fs are Gs. For example, if there are no unicorns, then all unicorns have tentacles. It also argues the problem is not resolved by rejecting universalism or extensionalism, nor by adopting free or plural logic.

In philosophical circles it is widely understood that Michel de Montaigne was a humanist. It is less so understood that he was a Catholic. Drawing on rich experiential research that has culminated in a visit to the cenotaph of Montaigne in Bordeaux, France, the Sanctuary of Our Lady Fátima in Fátima, Portugal, and the Ring of Brodgar in the Orkney Islands, Scotland, Woodman outlines a modern case for the existence of God using a novel humanistic approach.