This paper presents a typology of human actions, based on Aristotle’s kinesis–energeia dichotomy and on a formal elaboration (with some refinement) of the Vendler–Kenny classificatory schemes for action types (or action verbs). The types introduced are defined throughout by inferential criteria, in terms of what here are referred to as “modal-temporal expressions” (‘MT-terms’). Examples of familiar categories analysed in this way are production and maintenance, but the procedure is meant to offer a basis for defining various other commonsense categories. Among (...) the more theoretical categories introduced are “Aristotelian projects”, i.e. actions defined in terms of Aristotle’s conceptions of movement/change, as well as “abstract projects”, in which the agent ensures that something changes from not being a fact to being a fact, and “conditional agency”, which involves actions that are to be performed when/if certain conditions come to be fulfilled. A category like “starting an action” is itself inferentially defined here in MT-terms, and so, inter alia, are proceeding with, finishing, stopping and interrupting an action. There is also a demonstration of how actions of one type may be converted into those of other types, where this is a matter of the way they are “seen” or described. There is also an implication to the effect that some of these distinctions may be useful for formulating certain critical insights regarding modern life. (shrink)

The problem of truthmakers for negative propositions was introduced by Bertrand Russell in 1918. Since then the debate has mostly been concerned with whether to accept or reject their existence, and little has been said about what it is that makes a negative proposition negative. This is a problem as it is obvious that you cannot just read it off from the grammar of a sentence. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that propositions may be negative or positive (...) in many ways: it offers a typology, and shows how the question of the existence of negative facts will receive a different answer depending on its relationship to that typology. (shrink)

Counterfactual reasoning has always played a role in human life. We ask questions like, “Could it have been different?,” “Under which conditions might/would it have been different?,” and “What would have happened if …?” If we do not find an answer, i.e., what we accept as an answer, we may start reasoning. Reasoning means introducing new information or assumptions, new questions, new answers to new questions, and so on. From a formal point of view, reasoning may be compared with moving (...) stepwise toward a destination in a path system without ever achieving an overview of the system. Seen in this way, reasoning is an activity with its own rationale, which must be studied from the agent’s own perspective. This paper explores the following query: Which conditions are necessarily fulfilled when the act of posing a specific question, or of introducing a particular piece of information or assumption, etc., may count as a step toward the answer to the initial question? (shrink)

The problem of the existence of negative facts as truthmakers for negative propositions was introduced by Bertrand Russell in 1918. In the debate since then, most writers have tended to reject their existence, Russell himself being the most conspicuous exception. Two other strategies have been offered. The first, usually called incompatibilism, actually goes back to Plato, whereas the second, the totality fact theory, was introduced by D. M. Armstrong in 1997. The aim of this paper is to show the problematic (...) character of some of the presuppositions shared by all three of the strategies mentioned above – presuppositions that figure in most of the current discourse on the subject. First, the concept of a negative proposition is not clear: one needs to make a distinction between grammatically negative propositions and “ontologically” negative ones. Second, it turns out that propositions may be ontologically negative in many ways, each of which may call for a different specific analysis with respect to the question of the existence of what would be the corresponding negative facts. Third, at the bottomline, it is shown that we need a concept of the existence or reality of facts that is not derived solely from their function as truthmakers. Such a concept, it is argued, is furnished by a theory that I shall call “ontological consequentialism”. (shrink)