Argumenta – Journal of Analytic Philosophy

In this paper I reconstruct Spencer (2014)’s argument supporting the conclusion that ‘race’, in its current U.S. meaning, is a rigidly designating proper name for a biologically real entity, specifically for the partition at the K = 5 level of human population structure. Then, I object to the argument by contesting three distinct key assertions in it. First, I contest the assumption that if a term t has a logically inconsistent set of identifying conditions but a robust extension, then it is appropriate to identify the meaning of t as…

This paper explores the Persistence Question about cities, that is, what is necessary and sufficient for two cities existing at different times to be numerically identical. We first show that we can possibly put an end to the existence of a city in a number of ways other than by physically destroying it, which reveals the metaphysics of cities to be partly different from that of ordinary objects. Then we focus in particular on the commonly perceived vulnerability of cities to imaginary relocation; and we make the hypothesis that cities…

This paper explores the Persistence Question about cities, that is, what is necessary and sufficient for two cities existing at different times to be numerically identical. We first show that we can possibly put an end to the existence of a city in a number of ways other than by physically destroying it, which reveals the metaphysics of cities to be partly different from that of ordinary objects. Then we focus in particular on the commonly perceived vulnerability of cities to imaginary relocation; and we make the hypothesis that cities…