DOCSLIB.ORG

Physicalism and Its Discontents

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Physicalism and Its Discontents Physicalism and Its Discontents Edited by CARL GILLETT Illinois Wesleyan University BARRY LOEWER Rutgers University PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, VIC 3166, Australia Ruiz de Alarcón 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa http://www.cambridge.org © Cambridge University Press 2001 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2001 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge Typeface Times Roman 10/12 pt. System QuarkXPress [BTS] A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Physicalism and its discontents / edited by Carl Gillett, Barry Loewer. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. Contents: The rise of physicalism / David Papineau – From physics to physicalism / Barry Loewer – Sufficiency claims and physicalism, a formulation / D. Gene Witmer – Realization and mental causation / Sydney Shoemaker – Physicalism and psychology, a plea for a substantive philosophy of mind / Georges Rey – Davidson and non-reductive materialism, a tale of two cultures / Howard Robinson – Substance physicalism / Noa Latham – Possibility, physical and metaphysical / Stephen Leeds – The roots of reductionism / Scott Sturgeon – The significance of emergence / Tim Crane – The methodological role of physicalism, a minimal skepticism / Carl Gillett – Physicalism, empiricism, and positivism / Gary Gates – Mental causation and consciousness, the two mind-body problems for the physicalist / Jaegwon Kim – How not to solve the mind- body problem / Colin McGinn – Deconstructing New Wave materialism / Terence Horgan and John Tienson – In defence of New Wave materialism, a response to Horgan and Tienson / Brian McLaughlin – Physicalism unfalsified, Chalmer’s inconclusive conceivability argument / Andrew Melnyk. 1. Materialism. 2. Philosophy of mind. I. Gillett, Carl, 1967– II. Loewer, Barry. B825 .P49 2001 146¢.3–dc21 00-065155 ISBN 0 521 80175 3 hardback Contents Contributors page vii Preface ix Part I Physicalism 1 The Rise of Physicalism 3 david papineau 2 From Physics to Physicalism 37 barry loewer 3 Sufficiency Claims and Physicalism: A Formulation 57 d. gene witmer 4 Realization and Mental Causation 74 sydney shoemaker 5 Physicalism and Psychology: A Plea for a Substantive Philosophy of Mind 99 georges rey 6 Davidson and Nonreductive Materialism: A Tale of Two Cultures 129 howard robinson 7 Substance Physicalism 152 noa latham 8 Possibility: Physical and Metaphysical 172 stephen leeds Part II Physicalist Discontents 9 The Roots of Reductionism 197 scott sturgeon 10 The Significance of Emergence 207 tim crane 11 The Methodological Role of Physicalism: A Minimal Skepticism 225 carl gillett 12 Physicalism, Empiricism, and Positivism 251 gary gates vi Contents Part III Physicalism and Consciousness: A Continuing Dialectic Arguments for Pessimism 13 Mental Causation and Consciousness: The Two Mind- Body Problems for the Physicalist 271 jaegwon kim 14 How Not to Solve the Mind-Body Problem 284 colin mcginn 15 Deconstructing New Wave Materialism 307 terence horgan and john tienson Optimistic Rejoinders 16 In Defense of New Wave Materialism: A Response to Horgan and Tienson 319 brian p. mclaughlin 17 Physicalism Unfalsified: Chalmers’s Inconclusive Conceivability Argument 331 andrew melnyk References 350 Index 367 1 The Rise of Physicalism DAVID PAPINEAU No one could seriously, rationally suppose that the existence of antibiotics or electric lights or rockets to the moon disproves... mind-body dualism. Stephen R.L. Clark (1996) Introduction In this chapter I want to discuss the way in which physical science has come to claim a particular kind of hegemony over other subjects in the second half of this century. This claim to hegemony is generally known by the name of physicalism. In this chapter I shall try to understand why this doctrine has come to prominence in recent decades. By placing this doctrine in a historical context, we will be better able to appreciate its strengths and weaknesses. As a preliminary, note that contemporary physicalism is an ontologi- cal rather than a methodological doctrine. It claims that everything1 is physically constituted, not that everything should be studied by the methods used in physical science. This emphasis on ontology rather than methodology marks a striking contrast with the ‘unity of science’ doc- trines prevalent among logical positivists in the first half of the century. The logical positivists were much exercised by the question of whether the different branches of science, from physics to psychology, should all use the same method of controlled observation and systematic gen- eralization. They paid little or no attention to the question of whether everything is made of the same physical stuff. By contrast, physicalism, as it is understood today, has no direct methodological implications. Some physicalists uphold the view that all sciences should use the “positivist” methods of observation and gener- alization. But as many would deny this. You can be a physicalist about biology, say, and yet deny that biology is concerned with laws, or a physicalist about sociology, and yet insist that sociology should use the method of empathetic verstehen rather than third-person observation. 4 david papineau This methodological liberalism goes with the fact that the ontological claims of fin-de-siècle physicalism are often carefully nuanced. If physi- calism simply meant type-type physical reduction, of the kind classically characterized in Ernst Nagel’s The Structure of Science (1961), then methodological unity of science would arguably follow, in principle at least, from physicalism. But physicalism today clothes itself in various subtler shades. We have physical supervenience, physical realization, token-token physical identity, and so on. These more sophisticated doctrines leave plenty of room for different sciences to be studied in different ways. But I am already drifting away from the main subject of this chapter. My concern here is not to distinguish the different species of physical- ism, though I shall touch on this in passing later, but to try to understand the reasons for physicalism of any kind. Why have so many analytic philosophers in the second half of the twentieth century suddenly become persuaded that everything is physical? Fashions and Arguments It certainly wasn’t always so. Perhaps the easiest way to highlight the recent shift in thinking about physicalism is to recall a once-heated mid-century debate about the status of psychological explanation. In contemporary terms, this debate was about the scientificity of ‘folk psychology.’ On the one side were those, like Carl Hempel and A.J.Ayer, who argued that ‘reasons are causes.’ By this they meant that psycho- logical explanations are underpinned by empirical generalizations, implicit in everyday thought, which link psychological states such as belief and desire to subsequent behavior. Opposed to Hempel and Ayer were thinkers such as William Dray, and Peter Winch, who argued that the links between reason and action are “logical” or “meaningful,” not empirical (Hempel [1942]; Ayer [1969]; Dray [1957]; Winch [1958]). In one respect this old debate is still up to date. It concerned the question of whether everyday psychological thinking is suitable for incorporation in a scientific psychology – whether folk psychology is a ‘proto-science,’ as it is sometimes put – and this question is still very much a live issue. But at another level the old debate is now quite outmoded. This is because the participants in the old debate showed little or no interest in the question of how the mind relates to the brain. They wanted to know whether there are testable, empirical laws linking mental states to behavior. But they seemed to see no connection between this issue and the question of the relation of mental states to brain states. The Rise of Physicalism 5 Nowadays, by contrast, everybody has a view on this latter question. Indeed nearly all analytic philosophers in this area, including those who side with Dray and Winch against the scientificity of commonsense psy- chology,now accept that the mind is in some way constitutively connected with the brain. (Thus consider Donald Davidson. He is the modern cham- pion of the Dray-Winch view that the explanatory links between reason and action are a sui generis matter of rational understanding, not scien- tific law. Yet he made his name by arguing that, even so, ‘reasons are causes.’ In effect, his contribution was to show how the Dray-Winch methodological denial of psychological laws could be combined with a physicalist commitment to mind-brain constitution (Davidson [1963]).) This transformation of the old ‘reasons and causes’ debate happened very quickly. Until the 1950s the issue was purely about lawlike patterns. The issue of mind-brain identity was not on the agenda. Then suddenly, in the 1950s and 1960s, a whole stream of philosophers came out in favor of physicalism. First there were Herbert Feigl and the Australian central state materialists,
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Does the Counterfactual Theory of Explanation Apply to Non-Causal Explanations in Metaphysics?
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by PhilSci Archive Does the Counterfactual Theory of Explanation Apply to Non-Causal Explanations in Metaphysics? Alexander Reutlinger Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy LMU Munich [email protected] In the recent philosophy of explanation, a growing attention to and discussion of non-causal explanations has emerged, as there seem to be compelling examples of non-causal explanations in the sciences, in pure mathematics, and in metaphysics. I defend the claim that the counterfactual theory of explanation (CTE) captures the explanatory character of both non-causal scientific and metaphysical explanations. According to the CTE, scientific and metaphysical explanations are explanatory by virtue of revealing counterfactual dependencies between the explanandum and the explanans. I support this claim by illustrating that CTE is applicable to Euler’s explanation (an example of a non-causal scientific explanation) and Loewer’s explanation (an example of a non-causal metaphysical explanation). 1 1. Introduction Since the early 2000s, one finds a strikingly common theme in philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, and metaphysics: an increasing attention to non-causal explanations. 1 Many philosophers of science, philosophers of mathematics and metaphysicians take seriously the view that (a) there are – alongside with familiar causal explanations – compelling examples of non-causal explanations in the sciences, and that (b) there are instances of non-causal explanations in pure mathematics and in metaphysics. According to this view, explanation is a goal of many epistemic endeavors, not merely of the natural and social sciences. A significant amount of work has been dedicated to understanding the differences and commonalities of explanations in the sciences and in pure mathematics (see Steiner 1978; Kitcher 1984; and, more recently, Mancosu 2011; Lange 2013, 2014).
    [Show full text]
  • Kedwards CV Inprogress.Pages
    Philosophy Department 541 Hall of Languages Syracuse University Syracuse, NY 13244-1170 [email protected] Kevan Edwards 31 5-416-2700 (cell) ACADEMIC APPOINTMENTS 2008 - Assistant Professor, Syracuse University 2006-2008 Assistant Professor, University of Kansas EDUCATION 2000-2006 Ph.D. in Philosophy, Rutgers University, October 2006 2000 B.A., Specialist in Philosophy, with high distinction, University of Toronto DISSERTATION Oct. 2006 Referentialism without Compromise: Semantics at the Intersection of Mind and Language Committee: Jerry Fodor, Barry Loewer, Stephen Neale, Georges Rey PUBLICATIONS 2014 "Keeping (Direct) Reference in Mind". Noûs 48(2), pp. 342-367. 2013 “Concepts”. Oxford Bibliographies (published online Sept. 30, 2013) http:// www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195396577/ obo-9780195396577-0220.xml 2012 “Review of ‘The Extended Mind’, Edited by Richard Menary.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy: 1-3. 2011 “Higher-level Concepts and Their Heterogeneous Implementations: A Polemical Response to Edouard Machery’s Doing Without Concepts”. Philosophical Psychology, 24(1), 119-133. 2010 “Review of David Thompson, Daniel Dennett”. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=20167. 2010 “Unity Amidst Heterogeneity in Theories of Concepts”. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33(2-3), 210-211. [Commentary on Machery, Doing Without Concepts (OUP)] 2010 “Concept Referentialism and the Role of Empty Concepts”. Mind & Language, 25(1), 89-118. !1 of !6 2009 “Referring When Push Comes to Shove”. In New Waves in the Philosophy of Language (pp. 60-86). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2009 “What Concepts Do”. Synthese, 170(2), 289-310. PRESENTATIONS / COMMENTS / CHAIRED SESSIONS 2014 “The Concept of a Concept, in Philosophy, Psychology, and (Hopefully) Beyond.
    [Show full text]
  • Philosophy of Science Reading List
    Philosophy of Science Area Comprehensive Exam Reading List Revised September 2011 Exam Format: Students will have four hours to write answers to four questions, chosen from a list of approximately 20-30 questions organized according to topic: I. General Philosophy of Science II. History of Philosophy of Science III. Special Topics a. Philosophy of Physics b. Philosophy of Biology c. Philosophy of Mind / Cognitive Science d. Logic and Foundations of Mathematics Students are required to answer a total of three questions from sections I and II (at least one from each section), and one question from section III. For each section, we have provided a list of core readings—mostly journal articles and book chapters—that are representative of the material with which we expect you to be familiar. Many of these readings will already be familiar to you from your coursework and other reading. Use this as a guide to filling in areas in which you are less well- prepared. Please note, however, that these readings do not constitute necessary or sufficient background to pass the comp. The Philosophy of Science area committee assumes that anyone who plans to write this exam has a good general background in the area acquired through previous coursework and independent reading. Some anthologies There are several good anthologies of Philosophy of Science that will be useful for further background (many of the articles listed below are anthologized; references included in the list below). Richard Boyd, Philip Gasper, and J.D. Trout, eds., The Philosophy of Science (MIT Press, 991). Martin Curd and J.
    [Show full text]
  • A Companion to David Lewis
    A Companion to David Lewis Edited by Barry Loewer and Jonathan Schaffer This edition frst published 2015 © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Registered Offce John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK Editorial Offces 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK For details of our global editorial offces, for customer services, and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com/wiley-blackwell. The right of Barry Loewer and Jonathan Schaffer to be identifed as the authors of the editorial material in this work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher. Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.
    [Show full text]
  • On What Language Is by David Alexander Balcarras MA, University
    On What Language Is by David Alexander Balcarras M.A., University of Toronto (2014) B.A. (Hons.), University of Toronto (2013) Submitted to the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY September 2020 c 2020 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. All rights reserved. Signature of Author . Department of Linguistics and Philosophy September 1, 2020 Certified by . Alex Byrne Professor of Philosophy Thesis Supervisor Accepted by . Bradford Skow Laurence S. Rockefeller Professor of Philosophy Chair of the Committee on Graduate Students 1 On What Language Is by David Balcarras Submitted to the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy on September 1, 2020 in Partial Fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy ABSTRACT What is language? I defend the view that language is the practical capacity for partaking in communication with linguistic signs. To have a language just is to know how to communicate with it. I argue that this view—communicationism—is compatible with its main rival: the view that we know our language by tacitly knowing a particular generative grammar, a set of rules and principles pairing sounds with meanings. But only communicationism gets at language’s essence. Moreover, the rival view may be false, for there is in fact little reason to think we tacitly know grammars. In chapter 1, I argue that communicationism is compatible with the view that language is con- stituted by tacit knowledge of grammar because the brain states that realize grammatical knowl- edge do so because they enable us to know how to linguistically communicate.
    [Show full text]
  • David Papineau
    1 The Problem of Consciousness David Papineau Forthcoming in The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Consciousness ed Uriah Kriegel Introduction Consciousness raises a range of philosophical questions. We can distinguish between the How? , Where? , and What? questions. First, how does consciousness relate to other features of reality? Second, where are conscious phenomena located in reality? And, third, what is the nature of consciousness? In line with much philosophical writing over the past fifty years, this chapter will focus mostly on the How? question. Towards the end I shall also say some things about the Where? question. As for the What? question, a few brief introductory remarks will have to suffice. This is not to deny that the What? question raises a range of philosophically interesting issues. There is much to ask about the nature of consciousness. Must conscious states always involve some reflective awareness of themselves? Do all conscious states have an intentional content? Must consciousness always be consciousness for some subject, and if so for what kind of subject? In what sense, if any, are the conscious experiences of a subject at a given time always unified into some whole? However, in order to keep my task manageable, I shall leave issues like these for the essays that follow in this volume. For my purposes, it will be enough if we simply characterize consciousness in the normal way, as states that are “like something” for the subjects that have them. If examples are wanted, simply reflect on the difference between having your eyes open, and enjoying a range of conscious visual experiences, and closing your eyes and eliminating those conscious experiences.
    [Show full text]
  • Induction and the Glue of the World
    Induction and the Glue of the World Harjit Bhogal* Forthcoming in Australasian Journal of Philosophy† Abstract Humean metaphysical views have often been criticized for leading to inductive skepticism. If there is no glue holding the world together, as the Humean believes, then there seems to be no basis on which to infer from past to future. However, Humeans have typically been unconcerned. After all, they say, everyone has a problem with induction. But, if we look at the connection between induction and explanation, we can develop the problem of induction in a way that hits the Humean, but not the anti-Humean. The Humean faces an ‘internal’ problem with induction – skepticism about important inductive inferences naturally flows from their position in a way that it doesn’t for the anti-Humean. This is a major problem, perhaps a fatal one, for the Humean. Keywords: Induction, Explanation, Humeanism, Laws of Nature *Thanks to Thomas Blanchard, Chris Dorst, Katie Elliott, Nina Emery, Alison Fernandes, Ned Hall, Mike Hicks, Siegfried Jaag, Christian Loew, Barry Loewer, Elizabeth Miller, Zee Perry, Erica Shumener, Peter Tan and two referees for, and the editor of, AJP extremely helpful comments. †This is a preprint of an article whose final and definitive form will be published in the Australasian Journal of Philosophy. The Australasian Journal of Philosophy is available online at: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/. 2 1 Introduction The core idea of Humeanism (as that term is used in modern metaphysics and philosophy of science) is that there are no necessary connections between distinct existences. The picture that flows from this is one where the world is, at its base, just a mosaic of disconnected events pushed up against each other in spacetime [Lewis, 1986, pp.
    [Show full text]
  • Contemporary Issues Concerning Scientific Realism
    The Future of the Scientific Realism Debate: Contemporary Issues Concerning Scientific Realism Author(s): Curtis Forbes Source: Spontaneous Generations: A Journal for the History and Philosophy of Science, Vol. 9, No. 1 (2018) 1-11. Published by: The University of Toronto DOI: 10.4245/sponge.v9i1. EDITORIALOFFICES Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology Room 316 Victoria College, 91 Charles Street West Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 1K7 [email protected] Published online at jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/SpontaneousGenerations ISSN 1913 0465 Founded in 2006, Spontaneous Generations is an online academic journal published by graduate students at the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto. There is no subscription or membership fee. Spontaneous Generations provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. The Future of the Scientific Realism Debate: Contemporary Issues Concerning Scientific Realism Curtis Forbes* I. Introduction “Philosophy,” Plato’s Socrates said, “begins in wonder” (Theaetetus, 155d). Two and a half millennia later, Alfred North Whitehead saw fit to add: “And, at the end, when philosophical thought has done its best, the wonder remains” (1938, 168). Nevertheless, we tend to no longer wonder about many questions that would have stumped (if not vexed) the ancients: “Why does water expand when it freezes?” “How can one substance change into another?” “What allows the sun to continue to shine so brightly, day after day, while all other sources of light and warmth exhaust their fuel sources at a rate in proportion to their brilliance?” Whitehead’s addendum to Plato was not wrong, however, in the sense that we derive our answers to such questions from the theories, models, and methods of modern science, not the systems, speculations, and arguments of modern philosophy.
    [Show full text]
  • Counterfactuals with Disjunctive Antecedents Author(S): Barry Loewer Source: the Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 73, No. 16, (Sep. 16, 1976), Pp
    Counterfactuals with Disjunctive Antecedents Author(s): Barry Loewer Source: The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 73, No. 16, (Sep. 16, 1976), pp. 531-537 Published by: Journal of Philosophy, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2025717 Accessed: 27/04/2008 11:05 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=jphil. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We enable the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. http://www.jstor.org COUNTERFACTUALS WITH DISJUNCTIVE ANTECEDENTS 531 equally a consequence; so none of them is implied differentially with respect to U*. To take an entirely typical example, his 'If x is an emerald, then there is a nongrue emerald not belonging to U*' does indeed follow from the pertinent information together with the assertion that x is not grue; but so also, obviously, does 'For any class U, if x is an emerald, then there is a nongrue emerald not belonging to U - {x}'.
    [Show full text]
  • SCOTT SOAMES USC School of Philosophy 3709 Trousdale Parkway Los Angeles, CA 90089-0451 [email protected] / (213) 740-0798 May,2021
    SCOTT SOAMES USC School of Philosophy 3709 Trousdale Parkway Los Angeles, CA 90089-0451 [email protected] / (213) 740-0798 May,2021 EDUCATION Stanford University, BA., 1968 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ph.D. Philosophy, 1976 ACADEMIC HONORS Phi Beta Kappa, 1967 Danforth Graduate Fellow, 1971-76 Woodrow Wilson Graduate Fellow, 1971 AWARDS AND FELLOWSHIPS American Academy of Arts and Sciences, elected in 2010. Albert S. Raubenheimer Award for excellence in research, teaching, and service, 2009. The Raubenheimer is the highest faculty honor of the College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences of the University of Southern California. Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences Fellowship 1998-99 Academic Year. John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship 1989- 90. Title of Project: "Truth and Meaning" Class of 1936 Bicentennial Preceptorship, Princeton University, 1982-1985 National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellowship for 1978-79. Title of Project: "The Philosophical Investigation of Linguistic Theory" ACADEMIC POSITIONS Director of the School of Philosophy, University of Southern California, August 2007 – Distinguished Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Southern California, 2011 – Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Southern California, 2004 - 2010 Professor, Department of Philosophy, Princeton University, July 1989 - 2004 Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, Princeton University, July 1985 - June 1989 2 Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Princeton University, September 1980 - June 1985 Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Yale University, January 1976 - June 1980 Instructor, Linguistics Department, M.I.T., 1974-75 VISITING POSITIONS Franklin Pease Garcia Visiting Professor, Department of Humanities, Catholic Pontifical University of Peru, Lima Peru, May 18 – June 25, 2015. Visiting Professor, Department of Philosophy, Graduate School & University Center, City University of New York, Spring 1997.
    [Show full text]
  • Hilary Putnam and Immanuel Kant: Two ‘Internal Realists’?
    DERMOT MORAN HILARY PUTNAM AND IMMANUEL KANT: TWO ‘INTERNAL REALISTS’? ABSTRACT. Since 1976 Hilary Putnam has drawn parallels between his ‘internal’, ‘prag- matic’, ‘natural’ or ‘common-sense’ realism and Kant’s transcendental idealism. Putnam reads Kant as rejecting the then current metaphysical picture with its in-built assumptions of a unique, mind-independent world, and truth understood as correspondence between the mind and that ready-made world. Putnam reads Kant as overcoming the false dichotomies inherent in that picture and even finds some glimmerings of conceptual relativity in Kant’s proposed solution. Furthermore, Putnam reads Kant as overcoming the pernicious scientific realist distinction between primary and secondary qualities, between things that really exist and their projections, a distinction that haunts modern philosophy. Putnam’s revitalisation of Kant is not just of historical interest, but challenges contemporary versions of scientific realism. Furthermore, Putnam has highlighted themes which have not received the attention they deserve in Kantian exegesis, namely, the problematic role of primary and secondary qualities in Kant’s empirical realism, and the extent of Kant’s commitment to conceptual pluralism. However, I argue that Putnam’s qualified allegiance to Kant exposes him to some of the same metaphysical problems that affected Kant, namely, the familiar problem of postulating an absolute reality (Ding an sich), while at the same time disavowing the meaningfulness of so doing. In conclusion I suggest that Putnam might consider Hegel’s attempts to solve this problem in Kant as a way of furthering his own natural realism. 1. INTRODUCTION: PUTNAM AND KANT Putnam’s central focus since 1976 has been an attempt to articulate a kind of realism which does not end up either falsifying the world, through a false extrapolation from the results of science, or losing it entirely in scepticism and relativism.
    [Show full text]
  • Two Accounts of Laws and Time Barry Loewer (Rutgers) (To Appear Philosophical Studies)
    Two Accounts of Laws and Time Barry Loewer (Rutgers) (to appear Philosophical Studies) Abstract for “Two Accounts of Laws and Time” Among the most important questions in the metaphysics of science are “What are the natures of fundamental laws and chances?” and “What grounds the direction of time? My aim in this paper is to examine some connections between these questions, discuss two approaches to answering them and argue in favor of one. Along the way I will raise and comment on a number of issues concerning the relationship between physics and metaphysics and consequences for the subject matter and methodology of metaphysics. Key Words: laws, chance, time’s arrows, Humeanism, David Lewis, David Albert, Tim Maudlin. Among the most important questions in the metaphysics of science are “What are the natures of fundamental laws and chances?” and “What grounds the direction of time? My aim in this paper is to examine some connections between these questions, discuss two approaches to answering them and argue in favor of one. Along the way I will raise and comment on a number of issues concerning the relationship between physics and metaphysics and consequences for the subject matter and methodology of metaphysics. I. Preliminary metaphysical map: The main division in the metaphysics of laws and chances is between accounts that are broadly Humean and those that are broadly non-Humean. Humean views are so-called because like Hume, or rather the standard view of Hume, they eschew fundamental nomological modalities.1 Contemporary Humeans about laws hold that the totality of the universe consists of the distribution of fundamental categorical properties/quantities and relations instantiated by fundamental entities (particles, fields etc.) throughout all of space- time.
    [Show full text]