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I attempt to provide a new answer to the enduring question of why people take the acute risks of climbing mountains. In so doing, I aim to explain, but not necessarily justify, participation in suc...

This article attempts to develop a sketch or working model of a semiotic theory of individuation from a formalization of basic teleological structures. After caveats and provisional definitions, a formal apparatus is introduced that schematizes teleological structures by way of mathematical category theory. This is then combined with a commutation test for formal systems. Once the formal construction is sufficient, the extent to which the model can account for the operation by which objects, modes, kinds, and attributes become individuated from the “pure multiplicity” of indeterminate being is analyzed. Subsequently, the model is applied to a series of well-known problems in metaphysics and ontology – persistence, change, vagueness, coincidence, mereology, and universals – in order to demonstrate its effectiveness. The metaphysical picture that results from this application is positioned between the conventional extremes of realism and anti-realism: a semiotic anti-/realism. Empirical evidence is then also marshalled in support of the model by way of invocation and analysis of recent research into the development of the perceptual capacities of infants.

This paper responds to Tugendhat's well‐known and influential critique of Heidegger's concept of truth with the resources of Heidegger's texts, in particular §44 of Being and Time. To start with, Tugendhat's primary critical argument is reconstructed. It is held to consist firstly in the charge of ambiguity against Heidegger's formulations of his concept of truth and secondly in the claim that Heidegger's concept of truth is incompatible with an adequate concept of falsehood. It is shown that the supposedly ambiguous meanings are, on the one hand, in fact clearly distinguished by Heidegger and, on the other, that they merely amount to different extensions of the same meaning of truth. It is then shown how this concept of truth is indeed compatible with an adequate, albeit post‐metaphysical, concept of falsehood. Finally, the grounds of falsehood in the untruth of the existential of Verfallen are pursued and further objections are dismissed.