Research

Reflecting my interests mentioned above, these are some sample papers of mine that I expect to further develop and possibly publish later on. Comments are always welcome! :)

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[ Metaphysics and Ontology of Art]

"A Constructive Metaphysics for Fictional Characters and Their Creation" (My writing sample for PhD application) [LINK]

​     Creationism about fictional characters states that characters are created by authors. Despite its intuitive appeal, this position faces the problem of explaining how exactly fictional entities are created. I argue that to settle this problem, Creationists should embrace Constructive Creationism, according to which characters are constructed out of the properties ascribed to them in fiction and that any adequate theory of this stripe must meet two desiderata, Constitutional Flexibility and Constitutional Indeterminacy. Then I claim that the Property Construct View I develop satisfies both desiderata by introducing the relation of property constitution, a variant of material constitution, between a character and the properties ascribed to it. I further claim that the view gives a good explanation of the creation of fictional characters while drawing a parallel with the construction of ordinary concrete artifacts and pointing out some hitherto neglected similarities between characters and representational artworks. ​

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​"A Theory of Laws with Essence and Contingency" (Last update: 9/3/2024 [LINK])

    Among existing theories of laws of nature, dispositional essentialism grounds laws in the essences of relevant properties and thereby has the advantage of explaining how laws govern particular instances with the familiar notion of essence. Unfortunately, this view also renders all laws metaphysically necessary, contra our intuition that they are merely contingent. In this paper, I propose contingent dispositionalism, a novel theory of laws that both retains the explanatory merit of dispositional essentialism and respects our contingentist intuition at face value. My suggestion is that the nature of a natural property supporting a law of nature L includes (1) the core essential disposition E which all possible instances of the property must exhibit and (2) the intraworld constraint that all (or most) instances within each world consistently display one among a suitable class of different precisifications of E, which includes L. (Longer, old version available dated Dec 12, 2022: [LINK])

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"Mutually Constituting Artworks and the Non-Asymmetry of Material Constitution" (Last update: 11/01/2024 [Link])

According to hylomorphism, Michelangelo’s David is not only distinct from but also made up of its matter—a piece of marble. The majority of contemporary hylomorphists think that the relation of being a matter of—the relation between David and the marble—is asymmetric; if x is a matter of y, then y cannot be a matter of x. Here I provide a counterexample to this thought: it is possible that two artists each create a readymade that takes each other’s work as its matter and have both works exhibited as distinct single-authored statues. Given the plausible methodology that the ontology of art must reflect how art practitioners view and treat artworks, I claim that we should accept the hypothetical artists’ understanding of their works at face value, i.e., that the two readymades are in a mutual matter relationship.

Rejecting asymmetry has two interesting consequences. First, when combined with the plausible thesis that a hylomorphic composite ontologically depends on its matter, we additionally get a counterexample to the asymmetry of ontological dependence. Second, conjoined to Koslicki’s hylomorphism where matter is a proper part of the compound, we get the result that at least some proper parthood relation is nonasymmetric.

There seems to be no logical incoherence or unintelligibility within artistic practice to the suggestion that two statues can be made up of each other. However, one might have metaphysical complaints. First, the scenario violates Locke’s thesis that no two objects of the same kind can spatially coincide. Second, for an artwork to be created, its matter must preexist before the creative activities. I resolve these worries by arguing that we need not endorse Locke’s thesis in its full generality and that certain actual artworks are created simultaneously with their matter.

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[ Ethics ]

"In Defense of Roskies’s “Acquired Sociopath” Counterexamples" (Last update: Dec 16, 2022) [LINK]

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[ Philosophy of Religion ]

"Mystical Experience, Perception, and Cognitive Influence" (Last Update: 10/01/2024) [LINK]

    Religious experiences occupy a central role in the perpetuation and enrichment of religious practices. Among such experiences, a certain vivid, spontaneous class of them are “perception-like in that they have a similar kind of directness and undeniability to the subject” (Baker & Zimmerman, 2019). In the analytic philosophical literature, Alston (1988, 2005) has offered a systemized account of this type of experience in the Christian tradition, where the subject experiences God as a directly perceived object. His key claim is that one can have perceptually justified beliefs about God thanks to such experiences. Drawing on numerous historical reports of “mystical perception” and their resemblance to ordinary sensory experiences, he argues that we should treat such experiences as providing direct perceptual justification for the relevant theological beliefs. To do otherwise would be to hold “an arbitrary double standard,” attributing “prima facie justification to experientially grounded beliefs in one area and not in the other” (2005, p. 207).

    Due to the recent surge in empirical findings on the topic of religious experience, two novel epistemic challenges have arisen for Alston: (i) mystical experiences are treated as instances of imagination or thought by scientists, threatening their status as perceptual states; (ii) the cognitive influence of one’s religious background on one’s mystical experience is far greater than in sensory cases, eroding the parallel Alston draws between mystical and sensory experience and leading us to question whether such experiences can provide any legitimate epistemic justification.

    Here I argue that Alston’s claim nevertheless stands. To (i), I answer that even if certain mystical experiences are mental imagery or inner speech as the recent psychological models suggest (See Luhrmann, 2011; McCauley & Graham, 2020), they can still count as perception given a reliable covariance relationship with spiritual reality on Goldman’s (1977) account of perception. To (ii), I reply that not all religious experiences have been reported to align with the subject’s prior religious beliefs and that even when a mystical experience takes the same content as the penetrating unjustified antecedent belief, this does not eliminate the justificatory capacity of the said experience insofar as the operative belief-forming practice tends to track truths. (Longer, old version including further points dated 8/28/2023: [LINK])