Browsing by Author "Payton, Jonathan D."

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Open Access
Attempts
(Springer Netherlands, 2021-06-14) Payton, Jonathan D.
It’s generally assumed that, if an agent x acts by ϕ-ing, then there occurs an event which is x’s ϕ-ing. But what about when an agent tries to do something? Are there such things as attempts? The standard answer is ‘Yes’. But in a series of articles, and now a book, David-Hillel Ruben has argued that the answer is ‘No’: what happens when x tries to ϕ isn’t that an attempt occurs; rather, what happens is simply that a certain subjunctive conditional fact obtains; x tries to ϕ just in case, had all the necessary conditions for success obtained, x would have intentionally ϕ-ed. I defend the existence of attempts. Following Ruben, I frame the issue in terms of the logical form of trying sentences (i.e. sentences which report that an agent tried to do such-and-such). Against Ruben’s view that such sentences express subjunctive conditionals, I argue that they express existential quantifications over attempts qua events. Thus, trying sentences are true only if attempts qua events exist.
Open Access
Composition and plethological innocence
(Oxford University Press, 2021-11-15) Payton, Jonathan D.
According to Composition as Identity (CAI), a whole is distinct from each of its parts individually, but identical to all of them taken together. It is sometimes claimed that, if you accept CAI, then your belief in a whole is ‘ontologically innocent’ with respect to your belief in its parts. This claim is false. But the defender of CAI can claim a different advantage for her view. Following Agustín Rayo, I distinguish ontology (which concerns what there is) from plethology (which concerns what there are). I then show that CAI allows us to introduce an interesting notion of ‘plethological innocence’ which would otherwise collapse into the notion of ‘ontological innocence’, and that CAI renders belief in composite objects plethologically (but not ontologically) innocent.
Open Access
Composition as identity, now with all the pluralities you could want
(Springer Netherlands, 2021-05-07) Payton, Jonathan D.
According to ‘composition as identity’ (CAI), a composite object is identical to all its parts taken together. Thus, a plurality of composite objects is identical to the plurality of those objects’ parts. This has the consequence that, e.g., the bricks which compose a brick wall are identical to the atoms which compose those bricks, and hence that the plurality of bricks must include each of those atoms. This consequence of CAI is in direct conflict with the standard analysis of plural definite descriptions (and hence with the standard plural comprehension schema which uses it). According to that analysis, the denotation of ‘the bricks’ can include only bricks. It seems, then, that if CAI is true, ‘the bricks’ doesn’t denote anything; more generally, if CAI is true, there are fewer pluralities than we ordinarily think. I respond to this argument by developing an alternative analysis of plural descriptions (and an alternative comprehension schema) which allows the denotation of ‘the bricks’ to include non-bricks. Thus, we can accept CAI, while still believing in all the pluralities we could want. As a bonus, my approach to plural descriptions and plural comprehension blocks recent arguments to the effect that CAI entails compositional nihilism.
Open Access
Counting composites
(Routledge, 2021-08-21) Payton, Jonathan D.
I defend the thesis that Composition Entails Identity (CEI): that is, a whole is identical to all of its parts, taken together. CEI seems to be inconsistent, since it seems to require that the parts of a whole possess incompatible number properties (for instance, being one thing and being many things). I show that these number properties are, in fact, compatible.
Open Access
Divided agency, manipulation, and regret
(Universitaet Wien * Institut fuer Philosophie, 2024-11-30) Payton, Jonathan D.
Saba Bazargan-Forward (2022, Authority, Cooperation, and Accountability), conceives of agency as divided into two functions: a deliberative function (deciding what to do) and an executive function (acting on that decision). He claims that these two functions can distributed across multiple agents, and that this has important moral consequences: if you outsource the executive function to me, then the practical reasons you take there to be, for A-ing, are relevant to whether I can permissibly A and to how my A-ing reflects on my character. However, the natural way of understanding the 'divided agency' model --- i.e. that in cases of divided agency the executor literally acts on the deliberator's reasons --- is problematic and doesn't seem to reflect Bazargan-Forward's considered view, while his considered view doesn't seem to support his moral judgments, either about the permissibility of the executor's behaviour or of their character. I suggest an alternative to Bazargan-Forward's 'divided agency' model and consider what moral judgments it supports.
Open Access
Mereological destruction and relativized parthood: a reply to Costa and Calosi
(Springer Science and Business Media B.V., 2021-07-24) Payton, Jonathan D.
Metaphysicians of various stripes claim that a single object can have more than one exact location in space or time – e.g. endurantists claim that an object persists by being ‘all there’ at diferent moments in time. Antony Eagle has developed a formal theory of location which is prima facie consistent with multi-location, but Dami ano Costa and Claudio Calosi argue that the theory is unattractive to multi-location theorists on other grounds. I examine their charge that Eagle’s theory won’t allow an endurantist to account for certain cases of mereological change. I argue that the charge sticks, but not for the reasons Costa and Calosi think. Along the way, I explore an issue which is underexplored in their paper, namely, how an endurantist might modify Eagle’s theory to incorporate a parthood relation which obtains, not absolutely, but only relative to times.
Open Access
Mereological destruction and relativized parthood: a reply to costa and calosi
(Springer Netherlands, 2021) Payton, Jonathan D.
Metaphysicians of various stripes claim that a single object can have more than one exact location in space or time – e.g. endurantists claim that an object persists by being ‘all there’ at different moments in time. Antony Eagle has developed a formal theory of location which is prima facie consistent with multi-location, but Damiano Costa and Claudio Calosi argue that the theory is unattractive to multi-location theorists on other grounds. I examine their charge that Eagle’s theory won’t allow an endurantist to account for certain cases of mereological change. I argue that the charge sticks, but not for the reasons Costa and Calosi think. Along the way, I explore an issue which is underexplored in their paper, namely, how an endurantist might modify Eagle’s theory to incorporate a parthood relation which obtains, not absolutely, but only relative to times.
Open Access
Superplurals analyzed away
(Routledge, 2025-01-23) Nicolas, David; Payton, Jonathan D.
Many natural languages include plural terms, i.e. terms which denote many individuals at once. Are there also superplural terms, i.e. terms which denote many pluralities of individuals at once? Some philosophers say 'Yes', citing a range of sentence types which apparently can't be analyzed in a first-order plural logic, but which can be analyzed in a superplural one. We argue that all the data presented in favor of the superplural can, in fact, be analyzed using only first-order resources. The key is to add to ordinary plural logic a new notion of a generalized cover. A generalized cover reflects how interlocutors in a conversation may divide a salient plurality into many subpluralities, which can then be involved in reference and predication. With generalized covers in place, all the apparently troublesome sentences can be easily handled. Our approach can also be extended to account, not only for linguistic data which seem to favor the superplural but also for other phenomena involving plurals. The result is a unified approach to natural language plurals on which superplurals are analyzed away.