Irem Kurtsal

Research

The recurring research question I address in my scholarly work is the following: given known limitations of human reason, what informative claim can we safely make about the nature of reality? I defend an answer that is known in analytic ontology as ‘plenitude’: in any filled region of spacetime, there is a distinct object for every possible essence that the matter in that region satisfies. In my work I emphasize how plenitude respects and explains the subjectivities of differently-positioned humans, and non-reductively unifies the contributions of different disciplines.

Publications

Self-determination in Plenitude (2022). Erkenntnis 87 (5):2397-2418.

On a plenitudinous ontology, in every filled region of spacetime, there is at least one object that’s ‘exactly then and there’; one per each modal profile that the matter in the region satisfies. One of the strongest arguments for plenitude, the “argument from anthropocentrism”, puts pressure on us to accept that members of different communities correctly self-identify under different subject concepts. I explore this consequence and offer an account of selves on which self-determination is both socially and individually variant; we determine our spatiotemporal boundaries, our de re modal properties, and the kind of being that we are. We do this by determining which of many candidate beings has the property of being a self.

Persistence Egalitarianism (2021). Res Philosophica 98 (1):63-88.

Modal Plenitude—the view that, for every empirically adequate modal profile, there is an object whose modal profile it is—is held to be consistent with each of endurantist and perdurantist views of persistence. Here I show that, because “endurer” and “perdurer” are two substantially different kinds of entity, compossible with each other and consistent with empirical data, Modal Plenitude actually entails a third view about persistence that I call “Persistence Egalitarianism.” In every non-empty spacetime region there are two persisting objects: one that endures through the temporal dimension of that region, and another that perdures through the region. Additionally, if the argument from anthropocentrism makes a strong case for Modal Plenitude, then an equally strong and parallel case supports Persistence Egalitarianism. I close with the meta-semantic consequences of persistence egalitarianism for ordinary object talk.

The Sorites Paradox in Metaphysics (2019). The Sorites Paradox in Metaphysics. In Sergi Oms & Elia Zardini (eds.), The Sorites Paradox. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. pp. 207-228.

Take any putative ordinary object which is divisible into a finite number of small units and tolerant to the loss of one of them. We can remove these units one at a time, and since our object definitely doesn’t exist when there are zero units, and since we cannot pinpoint which removal brings about this destruction, the Sorites Puzzle threatens common sense. We can rescue ordinary objects from its grip, but since independently motivated linguistic explanations of vagueness depend on there being multiple candidate contents of vague terms, these efforts succeed only if there are multiple candidates that can be meant by ordinary object terms. Thus, many more objects than common sense accepts have to exist. The 'arguments from vagueness' also offer soritical reasons for object proliferation. Problematising the categories composite object and persisting thing (rather than specific object concepts), these show that either there are none of these (except simples) or every candidate for making up one, does. The latter, less revisionary alternative is plenitudinism. I defend Modally Full Plenitude, because it is three-dimensionalist and non-reductivist about de re modality – a distinct persisting object in any region, and for every modal profile satisfied by the matter in that region.

Almost‐Ontology: Why Epistemicism Cannot Help Us Avoid Unrestricted Composition or Diachronic Plenitude. (2014). Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 95 (1):130-139.

That any filled location of spacetime contains a persisting thing has been defended based on the ‘argument from vagueness.’ It is often assumed that since the epistemicist account of vagueness blocks the argument from vagueness it facilitates a conservative ontology without gerrymandered objects. It doesn't. The epistemic vagueness of ordinary object predicates such as ‘bicycle’ requires that objects that can be described as almost‐but‐not‐quite‐bicycle exist even though they fall outside the predicate's sharp extension. Since the predicates that begin with ‘almost’ are vague as well, epistemicism's ontological backdrop is far from the conservative picture it is thought to enable.

Three-dimensionalist’s semantic solution to diachronic vagueness. (2010). Philosophical Studies 150 (1):79-96.

A standard response to the problem of diachronic vagueness is ‘the semantic solution’, which demands an abundant ontology. Although it is known that the abundant ontology does not logically preclude endurantism, their combination is rejected because it necessitates massive coincidence between countless objects. In this paper, I establish that the semantic solution is available not only to perdurantists but also to endurantists by showing that there is no problem with such ubiquitous and principled coincidence.

Russell on Matter and Our Knowledge of the External World (2004). The Bertrand Russell Society Quarterly 124.

Bertrand Russell’s philosophy around 1914 is often interpreted as phenomenalism, the view that sensations are not caused by but rather constitute ordinary objects. Indeed, prima facie, his 1914 Our Knowledge of the External World reduces objects to sense-data. However, Russell did not think his view was phenomenalist, and he said that he never gave up either the causal theory of perception or a realist understanding of objects. In this paper I offer an explanation of why Russell might have undertaken the constructionist project of his 1914 work while not considering the resulting position that objects can be constructed out of sense-data to be phenomenalist.

Work in Progress

“Composition in Plenitude is not Unrestricted”

“Recent Thinking About Commonsense Ontology” (substantial review article)

“The Metaphysics of Quantum Indeterminacy: Fact from Fiction” (with Samuel Lebens)

“Putting the Art Before the Horse”

“How to Sider Haslanger-Barnes: A Plenitudinous Metaphysics of Gender”

“Plenitude as Ontology of the Eucharist” (with Daniel Rubio)

“Identity over Time” for The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy—commissioned revision and maintenance of entry originally written by André Gallois

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