Satbhav Voleti
Università della Svizzera italiana
“While writing La Disparition, Georges Perec intentionally never used the letter ‘e’. In other words, he omitted the use of the letter ‘e’. Does this sentence have as reference the omission of the use of letter ‘e’? If so, what is such an omission, metaphysically speaking? Clearly, Perec is somehow responsible for the omission. There is also (at least loosely speaking) a causal result of the omission: a lipogram.
Accounts of omissions place omissions in relatively distinct metaphysical kinds. Some, such as [5][6], consider them to be events and/or actions. Nuanced versions of the same [4] consider omissions to be constituted by yet not identical to events and/or actions. Other accounts consider them to be nothing at all [2] [7]. Another important account takes them to contain possibilia [1]. However, many dismiss the cogency of an account that regards omissions as absences, one which takes omissions to be just absences of actions. The Parmenidean [3] conviction against ‘negative’ entities such as absences is often the driving principle behind these dismissals. By providing a rough guide to what absences might be, I attempt to rescue the absence account of omissions from preliminary objections.
In this essay, I argue that difficulties of locating and individuating omissions are just as easy or hard as locating and individuating events. I also argue that locating omissions in the actual world suggests a solution to the problem of profligate omissions and the related problem of privileged absences. By doing this, I suggest a way to pacify the Parmenidean scepticism on the reality of omissions.
Bibliography
[1] Sara Bernstein. “Omissions as Possibilities”. In: Philosophical Studies 167.1 (2014), pp. 1–23
[2] Randolph Clarke. “Absence of Action”. In: Philosophical Studies 158.2 (2012), pp. 361–376.
[3] Stephen Mumford. Absence and Nothing: The Philosophy of What There is Not. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021.
[4] David Palmer. “Omissions: The Constitution View Defended”. In: Erkenntnis 85.3 (2020), pp. 739–756.
[5] Jonathan D Payton. “How to Identify Negative Actions with Positive Events”. In: Australasian Journal of Philosophy 96.1 (2018), pp. 87–101.
[6] Kenneth Silver. “Omissions as Events and Actions”. In: Journal of the American Philosophical Association 4.1 (2018), pp. 33–48.
[7] Achille C. Varzi. “The Talk I Was Supposed to Give?” In: Modes of Existence: Papers in Ontology and Philosophical Logic. Ed. by Andrea Bottani and Richard Davies. Ontos Verlag, 2006, pp. 131–152.”
Chair: tbd
Time: 03 September, 17:30-18:00
Location: HS E.002
SOPhiA 2026 