Colour, world and archimedean metaphysics: stroud and the quest for reality

This paper proposes a fundamentally opposite conception of the possibility of metaphysics to that of Barry Stroud in The Quest for Reality and other writings. I discuss Stroud’s views on everyday ‚truth’ and metaphysics (Section 1), on interpretation (Section 2 – replying with a theory of ‚quasi-understanding’), and his ‚no threat’ claim (Section 3). But the main argument (Section 4) is a response to Stroud’s claim that we have no right either to affirm or to deny the metaphysical reality of colours. Stroud’s view resembles Carnap’s (1950, Revue Internationale de Philosophie 4, 20–40), that experience can in some sense never settle the metaphysical issue between e.g. materialism, idealism and phenomenalism; though we can allow everyday ‚knowledge’ e.g. that there is a fallen tree in the garden outside, as something available on all three views. (Carnap takes the undecidability as a sign that the metaphysical issue is a pseudo-question; Stroud insists it is factual, but places it beyond our ken, ‚external’.) I argue, instead, that metaphysical argument is possible from within our conceptual scheme and epistemic situation (as in Gareth Evans’s arguments for realism over phenomenalism); that ‚external’ and ‚internal’ questions cannot be separated as Stroud wishes; and that if we really were denied knowledge on ‚metaphysical’ matters, that would infect our right to claim knowledge of ‚observational’ matters too. And I sketch a theory of colour that would allow us to conclude (at once ‚metaphysically’ and ‚internally’) that things are indeed ‚really’ coloured. For all his expressions of sympathy for Wittgenstein, Stroud’s metaphysics is remarkably Cartesian.     

Events and times: a case study in means-ends metaphysics

There is a tradition, tracing back to Kant, of recasting metaphysical questions as questions about the utility of a conceptual scheme, linguistic framework, or methodological rule for achieving some particular end. Following in this tradition, I propose a ??means-ends metaphysics??, in which one rigorously demonstrates the suitability of some conceptual framework for achieving a specified goal. I illustrate this approach using a debate about the nature of events. Specifically, the question is whether the time at which an event occurs is an essential property of that event. I argue that this question is naturally transformed into a question about the methodology of causal modeling. In this new framework, the question concerns what kind of variables to use to represent the effects of potential interventions on a system. This question has a demonstrably correct answer, which sheds new light on the original question.     

A trilemma for naturalized metaphysics

Radical naturalized metaphysics wants to argue (1) that metaphysics without sufficient epistemic warrant should not be pursued, (2) that the traditional methods of metaphysics cannot provide epistemic warrant, (3) that metaphysics using these methods must therefore be discontinued, and (4) that naturalized metaphysics should be pursued instead since (5) such science-based metaphysics succeeds in establishing justified conclusions about ultimate reality. This paper argues that to defend (5), naturalized metaphysics must rely on methods similar to those criticized in (2). If naturalized metaphysics instead opts for the weaker claim that science-based metaphysics is only superior to other metaphysics, then this is insufficient to establish (4). In this case, (4) might therefore be defeated by (1). An alternative is to replace (1) with the view that we should just approach metaphysical questions with the best means available. While this would recommend a science-based approach whenever possible, it would also allow for the continuation of science-independent metaphysics in domains that science has no bearing on and thus reject (3). The paper concludes that none of these alternatives is entirely satisfactory for naturalized metaphysics.     

A metaphysics for practical knowledge

Is Anscombean practical knowledge independent of what the agent actually does on an occasion? Failure to understand Anscombe’s answer to this question is a major obstacle to appreciating the subtlety and plausibility of her view. I argue that Anscombe’s answer is negative, and turns on the nature of mistakes in performance, and reveals a distinctive implicit metaphysics of mind and knowledge, structured by related capacities and exercises of capacities. If my interpretation is correct, then practical knowledge shares features with knowledge-how and knowledge-that, but deserves its own epistemic category.     

A pragmatist view of the metaphysics of entanglement

Synthese - Quantum entanglement is widely believed to be a feature of physical reality with undoubted (though debated) metaphysical implications. But Schrödinger introduced entanglement as a...     

A ground completely overgrown: Heidegger,Kant and the problem of metaphysics

ABSTRACT

While we endorse Heidegger’s effort to reclaim Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason as a work concerned with the possibility of metaphysics, we hold, first, that his reading is less original than is often assumed and, second, that it unduly marginalizes the critical impetus of Kant’s philosophy. This article seeks to shed new light on Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics and related texts by relating Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant to, on the one hand, the epistemological approach represented by Cohen’s Kant’s Theory of Experience and, on the other, the metaphysical readings put forward by Heimsoeth, Wundt and others in the 1920s. On this basis, we argue that Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant remains indebted to the methodological distinction between ground and grounded that informed Cohen’s reading and was transferred to the problem of metaphysics by Wundt. Even if Heidegger resists a ‘foundationalist’ mode of this distinction, we argue that his focus on the notions of ground and grounding does not allow him to account for Kant’s critique of the metaphysical tradition.     

Myth and metaphysics

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion -     

Ideological analytics: A study of evolving world values

This study analyses ideologies in a comparative perspective. It does so by treating ideologies as normative mental systems interacting with environmental physical realities and following their evolution in the contemporary world. As a result, it exemplifies a systematic method of undertaking a diagnosis, anagnosis, and prognosis of the global ideological situation.

The study introduces a relevance tree reflecting the conceptual framework of ideological analytics. On this basis, it presents three levels of generality which contain the outline of a substantive analysis. The examples given therein illustrate the model and could serve as prototypes for more detailed studies.

Finally, the study draws the main conclusions from the above generalizations by identifying the dialectical process of ideological dynamics. This process together with the non‐linear development of social systems produce the macrohistorical cycles of world evolution. Thus, the proposed hypothesis of dialectichaos can contribute to a better understanding oïideosocial change.     

Language and metaphysics: the case of theoretical identities

Kripke holds the thesis that identity statements containing natural kind terms are if true, necessarily true; these statements can be denominated theoretical identities. Kripke alleges that the necessity of theoretical identities grounds on the linguistic feature that natural kind terms are rigid designators. Nevertheless, I argue that the conception of natural kind terms as rigid designators, in one of their most natural views, hinders the establishment of the truth of theoretical identities and thus of their necessity. However, in Kripke’s works another proposal, not linguistic but metaphysical, is found to justify the presumed necessity of theoretical identities; it grounds on essentialism concerning natural kinds. In this regard, I question some of Kripke’s main claims, focusing on one of the main examples of theoretical identities put forward by Kripke, i.e., “Water is H\(_2\)O”. I challenge his a priori claims concerning what should be the essence of a natural kind like water. Furthermore, I adduce that the character of that theoretical identity is not that claimed by Kripke, since in the term flanking the right side of the identity sign it has to be resorted to the notion of similarity or it should have the form of a disjunction of a cluster of substances.

     

Individualism and the metaphysics of actions

I examine an intuitive property of folk-psychological explanations I call self-sufficiency. I argue that individualism cannot honor this property and work toward distilling an account of psychological explanation that does honor it, given some fairly standard assumptions. In doing so, my preference for an Externalist individuation of intentional state will emerge unambiguously. The assumptions I rely on are fairly standard but not uncontroversial. Yet not always do I attempt to defend them from objections. My goal is an account of folk psychology consistent with our every-day practices rather than the deduction of an idealized psychology from first principles. I conclude with some applications offered as evidence that the goal was achieved.     

Idealization in unitarian metaphysics

The aim of the paper is to propose an understanding of idealization in terms of Nowak’s unitarian metaphysics. Two natural interpretations of the procedure are critically discussed and rejected as inadequate. The first account of idealization is unable to explain why idealized factors cease to exert influence on the investigated magnitude. The second account of idealization solves this problem but does so at the cost of blurring the distinction between idealization and abstruction. Moreover, it faces the consequence that the process of idealization instead of leading to a sharper understanding of phenomena will normally result in making the picture more and more probabilistic. I propose a third account of idealization in unitarian terms that solves all three problems.     

Substantivity in feminist metaphysics

Elizabeth Barnes and Mari Mikkola raise the important question of whether certain recent approaches to metaphysics exclude feminist metaphysics. My own approach (from my book Writing the Book of the World) does not, or so I argue. I do define “substantive” questions in terms of fundamentality; and the concepts of feminist metaphysics (and social metaphysics generally) are nonfundamental. But my definition does not count a question as being nonsubstantive simply because it involves nonfundamental concepts. Questions about the causal structure of the world, including the causal structure of the social world, are generally substantive because their answers are not sensitive to any alternate, equally good conceptual choices we could have made. I also argue that such questions are substantive regardless of the ontology of social kinds.