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This book proposes a different perspective on actual queries within the field of ontology. Focusing on non-standard objects, it offers original answers to classic problems in metaphysics, such as individuation, reference, existence and non-existence. The chosen ontological fields are, for this purpose, ontologies that essentially involve human social practices such as intentional objects, fictions, mental illnesses or social entities. Even though the papers can be read independently, readers will discover a number of original intersections that provide fresh points of entry to contemporary metaphysical issues. By dealing with entities that are not so frequently addressed in related works, the book also contributes to broaden their perspective on ontology. Both scholars and students will find it particularly useful to have a survey about non-standard abstract entities that can provide new topics for their research.
List of contents
Chapter 1. Introduction (Fernando Martínez-Manrique and M. J. García-Encinas).- Chapter 2. Unification Principles for Biochemical Kinds (Francesca Bellazzi & Tuomas Tahko).- Chapter 3. Artifact-Functions: A Capacity-Based Approach (Kathrin Koslicki & Olivier Massin).- Chapter 4. Fictional Entities Are Social Entities: How Public Narratives Make Fiction Real (Francesco Consiglio).- Chapter 5. Regulative Dispositionalism: Toward a Metaphysics of Mental Disorder (Víctor Fernández Castro).- Chapter 6. Psychological Essentialism and Natural Kinds (Fernando Martínez-Manrique).- Chapter 7. On Social Entities (Stephen Mumford).- Chapter 8. Fictional Entities as Social Objects (Enrique Aranda).- Chapter 9. Notional Objects (Juan José Acero).- Chapter 10. Intentional Objects Are Not Objects (Mirco Sambrotta).- Chapter 11. Impossible Objects and Other Anomalies (Philip Atkins).- Chapter 12. Non-existence (M. J. García-Encinas).- Chapter 13. Is there a Fact of the Matter in the Debate between Structuralism and Factualism? (Otávio Bueno).- Index.
About the author
M.J. García-Encinas is professor of Philosophy at the University of Granada, where she belongs since 2002. She mainly works in Metaphysics: categories and modal knowledge. In particular, she has written on causation, properties, relations, identity, and personal identity. She is a trope theorist, a singularist concerning causation, and defends categorial intuition for modal knowledge, and a form of narrative approach to personal identity. She also loves to study the History of Philosophy. She has published in Analysis and Metaphysics, Dialectica, Dialogue, Metaphilosophy, Metaphysica, Philosophia, Teorema, among others, and was General Editor of Theoria: An International Journal. She is a founder of the recently created Spanish Network for Metaphysics.
Fernando Martínez-Manrique is Professor at the University of Granada, Spain, in the area of Logic and Philosophy of Science. His main research line is focused on philosophical issues of cognitive science –more in particular, on philosophy of psychology. He has been a visitor, either as a predoc or postdoc researcher, at Washington University St. Louis, Rutgers, Sydney, Chapel Hill and Miami. He has a naturalistic approach to philosophy, so his research is carried out in tight association with the most relevant theoretical and empirical developments, being in many cases continuous with them. Among his specific research topics, he has worked on the debate between symbolic and connectionist models of cognition, on the relation between language and thought, on the role of inner speech in mental processes, on the nature of concepts, on metacognition and social cognition, on self-deception, and on the nature of fiction. His latest interests lie in exploring the role that cognitive science may play in metaphysical research. He has published in journals such as Minds and Machines, Mind & Language, Metaphilosophy, Dialectica, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Journal for Consciousness Studies, Philosophical Explorations, or Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, among others.
