Week 1: Introduction

Analytic Metaphysics and Metaphysical Analysis

NTU METAPHYSICS

23 February, 2017

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INTRODUCTION
What is metaphysics? meta-metaphysics?
E. J. Lowe: the fundamental structure of reality as a whole
What is analytic metaphysics?
not defined by its subject matter
by its history and methodologies
A brief historical survey
stage 1: logical analysis (1900-1925)
stage 2: logical empiricism (1925-1950)
stage 3: linguistic analysis (1950-1975)
stage 4: conceptual analysis (1975-2000)
stage 5: ontological analysis (2000-)

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 Section 1

A Brief History

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STAGE 1: THE ORIGIN
revolt against idealism (Russell)
British idealism: nothing is real except the Absolute
Absurd? But how do we know what is real?
We do logical analysis!
theory of descriptions (1905): superficial vs. logical form
(example: the present king of France is bald)
the age of logical analysis (Wittgenstein 1922)
the general form of propositions
the logical structure of the world (atomism)
What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.

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STAGE 2: DARK AGE
rational reconstruction (Carnap 1928)
explicate all concepts in terms of the immediately given
- providing a firm foundation for all knowledge
the dichotomy: basis (empirical) + translation (analytic)
pseudo-questions of metaphysics (Carnap 1950)
verificationism?
internal questions: answerable within the linguistic framework
e.g. Is there a white piece of paper on my desk?
external questions: the reality of the system of entities as a whole
e.g. Are there physical objects?
external questions are pseudo-questions

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STAGE 3: AWAKENING
response 1: metaphysics within sciences (Quine 1951)
no sharp boundary between philosophy and science!
ontological commitment of best total theory
(example: existence of abstract entities, universals)
response 2: descriptive metaphysics (Strawson 1959)
describe the actual structure of our thought about the world
(conceptual scheme, ordinary language)
(example: free will, personal identity)
too conservative?
metaphysics is about the world, not us
metaphysics goes beyond the actual world

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STAGE 4: REVIVAL
metaphysics as a science of modality (Lewis 1986)
possible worlds and possibilities
supervenience as non-reductive analysis
(example: philosophy of mind)
the necessity a posteriori (Kripke 1972)
knowing metaphysical truths empirically
the age of conceptual analysis
step 1: identifying the folk concept X
(conceptual analysis: intuitions, conceivability, thought experiments)
step 2: investigating which things play the folk-theoretic role
(serious metaphysics: all else supervenes)

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STAGE 5: GOLDEN AGE
dissatisfaction with conceptual analysis
unreliability of intuitions, conceivability, and thought experiments
supervenience is too course-grained
metaphysics and the fundamental structure of reality
the structure of reality (Sider 2011)
metaphysics as what grounds what (Fine 2001)
language and the world: truthmaking (Armstrong 2004)
(example: composition)

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 Section 2

What is metaphysics about?

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SYLLABUS
(3/2) personal identity
- What makes a person the same person over time? In problematic
cases (teletransportation, split brains, etc.)?
(3/9) free will
- Free will seems incompatible with determinism and indeterminism.
So, how is free will real?
(3/16) mental states
- The physical world seems explanatorily complete in itself. So, how
can the mind have a place in the physical world?
(3/23) existence of God
- Do we need the existence of God to explain the existence of
contingent beings? Does the existence of evil refute the existence of
God?
(3/30) change
- Change involves the same thing having different properties over time.
But how can this be?
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SYLLABUS (CONTINUED)
(4/6) essence and de re modality
- Could Socrates have been a poached egg? Why not?
(4/13) modality
- Some things are possible but some things are impossible. What does
it take for a certain situation to be possible?
(4/27) counterfactual conditionals
- We think that things could have been different if such and such were
the case. What does this mean?
(5/4) causation
- Some events seem to follow other events by way of causation. Does
this require some necessary connection in nature?
(5/11) time
- Time flows. Every event is successively future, present, and past. But
how can this be? Is it possible to affect the past?
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SYLLABUS (CONTINUED)
(5/18) universals: realism
(5/25) universals: nominalism
- Many different particulars can share some common property. How can
we explain this? Is there a need to postulate something in the world
that explain it?
(6/1) particulars
- Is a particular just a bundle of properties? Or does a particular have a
propertyless substratum?
(6/8) composition
- Under what circumstances do objects compose something?
(6/15) space
- Is space an fundamental ingredient of reality? Or are facts involving
space reducible to facts involving material objects and their relations?

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DAVID LEWISS METHODOLOGY
methodological conservatism: bringing opinions to equilibrium
starting point: natural science and common sense (all are opinions)
no knock-down argument in philosophy: surviving at a price
we measure the price!
goal: bring them into equilibrium whilst preserving as much as possible

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