This paper argues for a certain kind of anti-metaphysicalism about the temporal ontology debate, i.e., the debate between presentists and eternalists over the existence of past and future objects. Three different kinds of anti-metaphysicalism are defined—namely, non-factualism, physical-empiricism, and trivialism. The paper argues for the disjunction of these three views. It is then argued that trivialism is false, so that either non-factualism or physical-empiricism is true. Finally, the paper ends with a discussion of whether we should endorse non-factualism (...) or physical-empiricism. An initial reason is provided for thinking that non-factualism might be true, but in the end, the paper leaves this question open. The paper also argues against a certain kind of necessitarianism about the temporal ontology debate; but this isn't an extra job—the falsity of this necessitarian view falls out of the other arguments as a sort of corollary. (shrink)

This paper argues for a certain kind of anti‐metaphysicalism about the temporal ontology debate, i.e., the debate between presentists and eternalists over the existence of past and future objects. Three different kinds of anti‐metaphysicalism are defined—namely, non‐factualism, physical‐empiricism, and trivialism. The paper argues for the disjunction of these three views. It is then argued that trivialism is false, so that either non‐factualism or physical‐empiricism is true. Finally, the paper ends with a discussion of whether we should endorse non‐factualism (...) or physical‐empiricism. An initial reason is provided for thinking that non‐factualism might be true, but in the end, the paper leaves this question open. The paper also argues against a certain kind of necessitarianism about the temporal ontology debate; but this isn't an extra job—the falsity of this necessitarian view falls out of the other arguments as a sort of corollary. (shrink)

The anti-metaphysical argument against scientific realism is the following: Knowledge of unobservable entities implies metaphysical knowledge; There is no metaphysical knowledge. Therefore, there is no knowledge of unobservable entities. This argument has strangely received little attention in the profuse literature on scientific realism. This paper claims that the AMA is logically more fundamental than both the pessimistic meta-induction and the underdetermination argument. The second and main claim of this paper is that the instrumentalists’ use of AMA is incoherent. The (...) gist of my argument is that experimental knowledge requires minimally metaphysical knowledge, and that minimally metaphysical knowledge—when associated with empirical knowledge—suffices to yield a minimal knowledge of the unobservable. I then examine and reject two possible responses: minimally metaphysical instrumentalism and algebraic instrumentalism. (shrink)

In the Anticipations, Kant defends the claim that all sensations must register on a purely subjective scale of response to stimuli, in order for sensation to be a possible source of knowledge. In this paper, I argue that Kant defends this claim in response to “scholasticism” or transcendental realism about sensation. The fact that all sensations are measurable on a subjective scale is the a priori content of the principle of the Anticipations, and, according to Kant, is a necessary condition (...) for building any systematic analysis of sensation. The anti-metaphysical arguments in the “Anticipations of Perception” are key building blocks of Kant’s transcendental idealism. (shrink)

By denying to vegetal life the core values of autonomy, individualization, self-identity, originality, and essentiality, traditional philosophy not only marginalizes plants but, inadvertently, confers on them a crucial role in the current transvaluation of metaphysical value systems. From the position of absolute exteriority and heteronomy, vegetation accomplishes a living reversal of metaphysical values and points toward the collapse of hierarchical dualisms.

Modality and Anti-Metaphysics critically examines the most prominent approaches to modality among analytic philosophers in the twentieth century, including essentialism. Defending both the project of metaphysics and the essentialist position that metaphysical modality is conceptually and ontologically primitive, Stephen McLeod argues that the logical positivists did not succeed in banishing metaphysical modality from their own theoretical apparatus and he offers an original defence of metaphysics against their advocacy of its elimination. -/- Seeking to assuage the sceptical (...) worries which underlie modal anti-realism, McLeod provides an original contribution to essentialist epistemology, engaging with current debates about modality and suggesting that standard essentialist approaches to some issues in the philosophies of logic and language require revision. -/- This book offers valuable insights to professional philosophers, postgraduates and advanced undergraduates interested in metaphysics, philosophy of logic or the history of twentieth-century analytic philosophy. (shrink)

Robert Stalnaker draws together in this volume his seminal work in metaphysics. The central theme is the role of possible worlds in articulating our various metaphysical commitments. The book begins with reflections on the general idea of a possible world, and then uses the framework of possible worlds to formulate and clarify some questions about properties and individuals, reference, thought, and experience. The essays also reflect on the nature of metaphysics, and on the relation between questions about what (...) there is and questions about how we talk and think about what there is. Two of the fourteen essays, plus an extensive introduction that sets the papers in context and draws out the essays' common threads, are published here for the first time. (shrink)

This paper characterizes two senses in which Hegel interpretations can be (anti-)metaphysical. It argues that Pippin's seminal work misreads Hegel’s Being Logic through reading it anti-metaphysically, in one of these senses. But it also suggests that Pippin’s recent work makes room for a metaphysical (in the corresponding sense) reinterpretation of the Being Logic. So it pushes, in the spirit of a friendly amendment, for a fuller such reinterpretation, one that nevertheless coheres with Pippin’s deep commitments about Hegel as (...) a post-Kantian philosopher, since the reading remains, in the relevant sense—now the other one—anti-metaphysical. (shrink)

The modern conception of self-consciousness holds that, in self-conscious thought, I think of myself as both subject and object; and that the subject is essentially embodied. This understanding begins with Kant. An anti-metaphysical treatment regards 'What is a self?' as expressing a pseudo-problem; it regards the claim of an immaterial self as nonsensical, and diagnoses its postulation. A moderate anti- metaphysical position analyses self-consciousness by appeal to the Analytic Principle: that self-consciousness is a phenomenon expressed -- or interpreted (...) -- by use of a device with the properties of the first person. This article proposes a strong interpretation of the Principle, involving the conceptual holism of self-consciousness and self-reference. But how essential is the use of 'I' to self-consciousness? In the name-user scenario, each speaker uses their own name self-consciously to self-refer. However, in this scenario, against appearances, 'I' is not in fact eliminated without loss of the language's expressive power, and so the Analytic Principle is preserved. (shrink)

Some central issues offin-de-siècle Hungarian philosophy and intellectual tradition can be retrieved from the writings of József Eötvös and his mid-nineteenth century contemporaries. An ambiguous attitude towards metaphysics, emphasis on sociological issues as well as a regional perspective are apparent in his texts prior to the emergence of the great fin-de-siècle generation of Hungarian intellectuals. They survived the Habsburg Empire thanks to the post-Monarchical literary tradition and Péter Esterházy's works; they provided an adequate vocabulary for the Central European experience (...) following the Soviet Era. (shrink)

Some central issues of fin-de-siècle Hungarian philosophy and intellectual tradition can be retrieved from the writings of József Eötvös and his mid-nineteenth century contemporaries. An ambiguous attitude towards metaphysics, emphasis on sociological issues as well as a regional perspective are apparent in his texts prior to the emergence of the great fin-de-siècle generation of Hungarian intellectuals. They survived the Habsburg Empire thanks to the post-Monarchical literary tradition and Péter Esterházy’s works; they provided an adequate vocabulary for the Central European (...) experience following the Soviet Era. (shrink)

This paper observes that P. F. Strawson’s distinction between descriptive and revisionary metaphysics is a baffling one from the perspective of traditional metaphysics. If one thinks of metaphysics as the study of the fundamental nature of reality, it is bewildering to divide up metaphysics in this way. The paper then tries to show how the distinction is no longer bewildering if we deny that such study is possible.

This paper discusses Moore’s chapter on Carnap in The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics. Even though different conceptions of metaphysics are defended by Moore and attacked by Carnap, common ground can be established on which to discuss Moore’s dismissal of Carnap. After correcting some infelicities in the characterization given of Carnap’s position, the paper sets out to show how Carnap can respond to Moore’s challenge and argues that Moore has failed to establish that Carnap’s philosophy is self-contradictory in conception (...) or bound to be fruitless in practice. (shrink)

My research in metaphysical realism and analytic metaphysics consists mainly in attacks on analytic metaphysics. My reason for this is a result of the fact that I am a mereological nihilis t, a blob theorist , an atomist (philosophic atomist), and a specific sort of conceptualist (see below). The variety atomism I argue for is similar to the traditional atomism of some of the ancient Greek and ancient..

My essay positions Heidegger’s Black Notebooks (Schwarze Hefte) in the light of the later transformation of his thought after die Kehre, which introduces a new motif: “the withdrawal of Being.” And while the Jewish question disappears from his official discourse, the essay poses it nonetheless, despite and against Heidegger’s silence: Does the diagnosis from the Black Notebooks, which perceives the Jew as the agent of metaphysical destruction, still stand? In my analysis, the figurative Jew emerges in a role which Heidegger (...) refuses to recognize: as a positive agent of letting-be, acting in accordance with Being’s rhythm of self-withdrawal. (shrink)

The Tractatus revolves around the connection between two central topics – the preconditions of symbolic representation and the nature of logic-cum-philosophy. Proper philosophy is an activity, namely of revealing the hidden structures that allow language to represent reality by way of logical analysis. At the same time the main purpose of such logical analysis consists in revealing metaphysical statements to be nonsensical. In the subsequent development of analytic philosophy, these two ideas parted company. The positive aim of revealing the logical (...) form of sentences resulted in a program closely associated with Davidson, namely a theory of meaning for natural languages that yields metaphysical corollaries. The negative aim of overcoming metaphysics ushered in the activity of dissolving conceptual confusions through conceptual rather than logical analysis, propelled by the later Wittgenstein. My presentation pursues these historical lines of influence. But the ultimate aim is a substantive one, namely to establish whether the two projects can be kept apart. With the later Wittgenstein, I criticize the claim that formal calculi constitute the hidden structure of natural languages. But I also contend that the hope of engaging in anti-metaphysical dialectic without relying on logico-conceptual analysis of some kind falls prey to a “myth of mere method”. (shrink)

Discussions about the extended mind have ‘extended’ in various directions in the last decades. While applied to other aspects of human cognition and even consciousness, the extended-mind hypothesis has also been criticized, as it questions fundamental ideas such as the image of a dual world, divided between an external and an internal domain by the border of ‘skin and skull’, the idea of a localized and constant decision center, and the role of internal representations. We suggest that the main virtue (...) of the hypothesis is not as a theory per se, but as a vaccine against persistent metaphysical prejudices about the mind’s structure, functions and borders. Being an hypothesis about the most efficient ways to combine resources and problems, and not a theory about the mind’s a-priori constitution, the extended mind view moves the focus from ontology to pragmatics and helps purify philosophy of mind from metaphysical remainders. (shrink)

This paper critically evaluates some arguments against metaphysics recently formulated by Bas Van Fraassen. A more positive view of the relationship between science and metaphysics is outlined.

The Tractatus revolves around the connection between two central topics – the preconditions of symbolic representation and the nature of logic-cum-philosophy. Proper philosophy is an activity, namely of revealing the hidden structures that allow language to represent reality by way of logical analysis. At the same time the main purpose of such logical analysis consists in revealing metaphysical statements to be nonsensical. In the subsequent development of analytic philosophy, these two ideas parted company. The positive aim of revealing the logical (...) form of sentences resulted in a program closely associated with Davidson, namely a theory of meaning for natural languages that yields metaphysical corollaries. The negative aim of overcoming metaphysics ushered in the activity of dissolving conceptual confusions through conceptual rather than logical analysis, propelled by the later Wittgenstein. My presentation pursues these historical lines of influence. But the ultimate aim is a substantive one, namely to establish whether the two projects can be kept apart. With the later Wittgenstein, I criticize the claim that formal calculi constitute the hidden structure of natural languages. But I also contend that the hope of engaging in anti-metaphysical dialectic without relying on logico-conceptual analysis of some kind falls prey to a “myth of mere method”. (shrink)

This book stakes out a position in the area of metaphysics that deals with modality. But is this even a legitimate area of inquiry? Chapter 1 begins by confronting scepticism on this score. Some hold that the logical positivists sharpened “Hume’s fork”— either “relations of ideas” or “matters of fact”—and thereby discredited metaphysics in general. Others hold that Wittgenstein discredited the specific metaphysical position known as essentialism. But both readings of the record are mistaken, McLeod argues. Hume did (...) not himself oppose metaphysics in general; he affirmed the value of “abstruse metaphysics”, and considered himself a practitioner. Positivist elaborations of Hume’s fork moreover were not enough to indict metaphysics in general. As for Wittgenstein, he himself engaged in essentialist speculation in the Tractatus. His question there was what about the world explains that the world is capable of being represented. The only answer possible must point to what the world by nature is like. (shrink)

: This paper investigates the way in which Rudolf Carnap drew on Gestalt psychological notions when defining the basic elements of his constitutional system. I argue that while Carnap's conceptualization of basic experience was compatible with ideas articulated by members of the Berlin/Frankfurt school of Gestalt psychology, his formal analysis of the relationship between two basic experiences ("recollection of similarity") was not. This is consistent, given that Carnap's aim was to provide a unified reconstruction of scientific knowledge, as opposed to (...) the mental processes by which we gain knowledge about the world. It is this last point that put him in marked contrast to some of the older epistemological literature, which he cited when pointing to the complex character of basic experience. While this literature had the explicit goal of overcoming metaphysical presuppositions by means of an analysis of consciousness, Carnap viewed these attempts as still carrying metaphysical baggage. By choosing the autopsychological basis, he expressed his intellectual depth to their antimetaphysical impetus. By insisting on the metaphysical neutrality of his system, he emphasized that he was carrying out a project in which they had not succeeded. (shrink)

The idea that the present is "ontologically privileged" can be traced back to texts as early as St. Augustine's Confessions and Aristotle's Physics. The issue of the ontological status of tense continues to set the agenda in contemporary philosophy of time, which is dominated by two views. Proponents of the Tenseless View argue that all events are, in the timeless sense of 'are', equally real. Defenders of the rival Tensed View maintain that only present events are real, and that the (...) reality of tense is the essence of time. The first two chapters of the dissertation are devoted to the presentation and study of these, on the face of it, mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive metaphysical theories of time. The aim of the analysis is, on the one hand, to highlight the insights that are motivating these theories and that are captured by them; on the other, it is to establish that neither theory can be squared with features of the language which it presupposes, and that, therefore, both have to be rejected. ;Uncovering and undermining the metaphysical prejudices shared by both views, in particular, the supposition that 'Real or not?' is the right question to pose with respect to tense, paves the way to the central thesis that occupies the second part of the dissertation. Crudely put, it is that the ingredients for the construction of a philosophically adequate conception of time are found, not among the products of metaphysical doctrines, but in the everyday uses we make of temporal notions. In the third chapter, a discussion of the indispensability of contexts for the use of temporal terms constitutes the beginning of the argument in support of this thesis. In chapter four an analysis of the philosophical role of tense-based biases in our attitudes concludes the argument, and yields a list of the main tools with which one can construct a conception of time out of everyday situations and the language employed in them. Chapter five consists of a demonstration of the application of these tools for the elucidation of notions such as 'the openness of the future', 'the fixity of the past' and 'time's passage' . Among the conclusions of this discussion is the suggestion that notions with which to further develop and enrich our conception of time may be obtained by the formation and participation in practices created for this end. (shrink)

Two central themes of Douglas Edwards’s The Metaphysics of Truth are anti-deflationism and substantial pluralism. In Part I of this paper I discuss Edwards’s grounds for rejecting deflationism and suggest a few additional grounds. In Part II I discuss Edward's truth-pluralism and respond to his criticism of my correspondence-pluralism. While these pluralisms share significant features, their differences also raise several important questions.

Metaphysical anti-realism is a large and heterogeneous group of views that do not share a common thesis but only share a certain family resemblance. Views as different as mathematical nominalism—the view that numbers do not exist—, ontological relativism—the view that what exists depends on a perspective—, and modal conventionalism—-the view that modal facts are conventional—all are versions of metaphysical anti-realism. As the latter two examples suggest, relativist ideas play a starring role in many versions of metaphysical anti-realism. (...) But what does it mean for the existence of something to “depend on” a perspective, or for a modal fact to “depend on” a convention? We can distinguish between various dependence relations, giving rise to an array of drastically different forms of metaphysical anti-realism. This article offers a guided tour. I develop a systematic distinction between various forms of metaphysical anti-realism with a focus on the role of relativist ideas in this landscape. (shrink)

Minimally, metaphysical realists hold that there exist some mind-independent entities. Metaphysical realists also hold that we can speak meaningfully or truthfully about mind-independent entities. Those who reject metaphysical realism deny one or more of these commitments. This Element aims to introduce the reader to the core commitments of metaphysical realism and to illustrate how these commitments have changed over time by surveying some of the main families of views that realism has been contrasted with: such as scepticism, idealism, and (...) class='Hi'>anti-realism. (shrink)

This book articulates a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of Jew hatred as a metaphysical aspect of the human soul. Proceeding from the Jewish thinking that the anti-Semites oppose, David Patterson argues that anti-Semitism arises from the most ancient of temptations, the temptation to be as God, and thus to flee from an absolute accountability to and for the other human being.

A perennial issue in contemporary philosophy is the question of how, in Wilfrid Sellars’ terms, categories of the ‘manifest image’ relate to those of the ‘scientific image’. A widespread kind of naturalism assumes that the categories of science have a certain kind of ontological priority and that other categories (meaning, mind, morality and so on) have to be somehow placed or located in the world of science to be fully vindicated. Huw Price has argued in several papers that if one (...) gives up a view of how language functions he calls ‘representationalism’ then this way of understanding placement problems—object naturalism—necessarily lapses. Price argues that in foregoing representationalism and embracing semantic deflationism we should remain naturalists, but subject naturalists, seeking to understand the function our different discourses play in our lives as natural beings: the project of global expressivism. This argument has recently been challenged by several authors who argue that object naturalism can coherently and rationally be pursued within a semantic deflationist framework. I will argue that these objections to Price’s view are all ultimately unconvincing given a wide enough purview of the dialectic. The viability and coherence of global expressivism itself, and whether it is the only possible form of subject naturalism, are briefly addressed in conclusion. (shrink)

This book provides an original perspective on the debate about anti-representationalism and the nature of philosophy. This debate has come to prominence in recent years through the work of people like Richard Rorty, Paul Horwich, Huw Price and Amie Thomasson. It is the first book to explicitly consider this well-known pragmatist kind of anti-representationalism in relation to anti-representationalist views in other areas of philosophy, in particular the philosophy of perception and cognitive science. Taking as its point of (...) departure the neo-pragmatism of Rorty and Price, it critiques the way these (and other) thinkers develop, on this basis, a positive view of philosophy and its remit. By examining the debate about representationalism versus anti-representationalism in perception and cognitive science it provides a different way of understanding the significance of neo-pragmatism, as well as providing an independently interesting perspective on these other debates. A central idea in this perspective involves distinguishing between a world-for-us and a world-in-itself, though in a different way from Kant and many other philosophers. The book extends these reflections to examine questions about realism and the limits of metaphysics for anti-representationalist pragmatism, arguing the view can uphold a common sense kind of realism, as well as the value of distinctively philosophical enquiry in metaphysics. (shrink)

In Meaning and Necessity (1947/1950), Carnap advances an intensional semantic framework on which modal claims are true in virtue of semantical rules alone, and so are a priori. In 'Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology' (1950), Carnap advances an epistemic-ontological framework on which metaphysical claims are either trivial or meaningless, since lacking any means of substantive confirmation. Carnap carried out these projects two decades before Kripke influentially argued, in Naming and Necessity (1972/1980), that some modal claims are true a posteriori. How should (...) a neo-Carnapian respond to Kripke's results? Some (notably, Chalmers and Jackson, in their 2001) have suggested that an extension of intensional semantics along lines of "epistemic two-dimensionalism" can accommodate Kripke's results while largely preserving commitment to the semantics-based a priority of modal claims. Here we consider how best to implement this suggestion, and how the resulting semantics fits with Carnap's second project. We find that the most promising (and most Carnapian!) post-Kripke version of Carnap’s semantics---abductive two-dimensionalism---presupposes an epistemology which undermines Carnap's metaphysical anti-realism. (shrink)

George Berkeley maintains both anti-abstractionism (that abstract ideas are impossible) and idealism (that physical objects and their qualities are mind-dependent). Some scholars (including Atherton, Bolton, and Pappas) have argued, in different ways, that Berkeley uses anti-abstractionism as a premise in a simple argument for idealism. In this paper, I argue that the relation between anti-abstractionism and idealism in Berkeley's metaphysics is more complex than these scholars acknowledge. Berkeley distinguishes between two kinds of abstraction, singling abstraction and (...) generalizing abstraction. He then rests his case for idealism, not on the denial of the possibility of generalizing abstraction, but rather on the denial of the possibility of singling abstraction. Moreover, Berkeley's argument does not rest on a blanket rejection of all forms of singling abstraction. Rather, the fundamental anti-abstractionist assumption, for his purposes, is the claim that primary qualities cannot be mentally singled out from secondary qualities. Crucially, the claim that the existence of physical objects cannot be mentally singled out from their being perceived is not a premise in, but rather a consequence of, Berkeley's argument for idealism. Berkeley's argument therefore avoids circularity inasmuch as it appeals to the impossibility of singly abstracting one idea in order to establish the impossibility of singly abstracting another. (shrink)

This book does two things. First, it introduces a novel kind of non-factualist view, and it argues that we should endorse views of this kind in connection with a wide class of metaphysical questions, most notably, the abstract-object question and the composite-object question (so, more specifically, the book argues that there’s no fact of the matter whether there are any such things as abstract objects or composite objects—or material objects of any other kind). Second, the book explains how these non-factualist (...) views fit into a general anti-metaphysical view called neo-positivism, and it explains how we could argue that neo-positivism is true. Neo-positivism is (roughly) the view is that every metaphysical question decomposes into some subquestions—call them Q1, Q2, Q3, etc.—such that, for each of these subquestions, one of the following three anti-metaphysical views is true of it: non-factualism, or scientism, or metaphysically innocent modal-truth-ism. These three views can be defined (very roughly) as follows. Non-factualism about a question Q is the view that there’s no fact of the matter about the answer to Q. Scientism about Q is the view that Q is an ordinary empirical-scientific question about some contingent aspect of physical reality, and Q can’t be settled with an a priori philosophical argument. And metaphysically innocent modal-truth-ism about Q is the view that Q asks about the truth value of a modal sentence that’s metaphysically innocent in the sense that it doesn’t say anything about reality and, if it’s true, isn’t made true by reality. (shrink)

The essay has two purposes. One is to point out connections and parallels between, On one hand, The debates of metaphysical realists and anti-Realists, And on the other hand, The debates surrounding moral realism. The second is to provide the outlines of a case for a kind of position that would generally be classified as moral realism. One feature of this position is that it emerges as parallel to, And compatible with, A metaphysical position that would generally be classified (...) as anti-Realism. (shrink)

A recent logical anti-exceptionalist trend proposes that logical theories are revisable in the same manner as scientific theories, either on grounds of the method of theory selection or on what counts as evidence for this revision. Given this approximation of logic and science, the present essay analyzes the commitments of both these varieties and argues that, as it currently stands, this kind of anti-exceptionalism is committed to scientific realism, that is, to realism about some unobservable entities evoked in (...) logical theories. The essay argues that anti-exceptionalism cannot be separated into metaphysical and epistemological varieties, and proposed rather to label anti-exceptionalists views either broadly in terms of theory revision, or narrowly in terms of logic’s affinity with science. (shrink)

This is a critical review of David Patterson's book Anti-Semitism and Its Metaphysical Origins (2015). In this review, I present the author's new explanation of the roots of anti-Semitism, which he finds in the anti-Semite's desire to become like God himself. Patterson's explanation makes an anti-Semite of all those who partake in the "Western rationalist project," especially philosophers (including Jewish philosophers such as Spinoza, Hermann Cohen, and Marx), but also Islamists and anti-Zionist Jews. I criticize (...) Patterson on two fronts: First, his "metaphysical" explanation relies on a petitio principii. Second, he should have argued his stance against that of Zeev Sternhell's thesis, according to which Western anti-Semitism is rooted, not in Western rationalism, but rather in the Western anti-rationalist (anti-Enlightenment) movement. (shrink)