DOCSLIB.ORG

“Well, That Depends on What You Mean by 'Φ'”

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text

Load more

“Well, that depends on what you mean by ‘φ’” On Substantive and Merely Verbal Disputes in Philosophy Ludvig F. Fuglestvedt Thesis presented for the degree of Master of Philosophy Supervised by Professor of Philosophy Herman Cappelen (University of Oslo, University of St. Andrews) and Willis S. and Marion Slusser Professor Emeritus of Philosophy Barry Stroud (University of California, Berkeley) Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas, University of Oslo, 2017 1 ©Ludvig F. Fuglestvedt, 2017 “Well, that depends on what you mean by ‘Ф’” On Substantive and Merely Verbal Disputes in Philosophy Ludvig F. Fuglestvedt http://www.duo.uio.no Artwork: Microsoft Office Word™ shapes 3 “Well, that depends on what you mean by ‘Ф’” On Substantive and Merely Verbal Disputes in Philosophy ii Abstract Are philosophers just talking past each other? Are they only arguing about what words mean? Is it all pointless? I often get that feeling, and many people on the street share that idea about what philosophers are up to, and there are also several philosophers who have placed related, deflationary, verdicts upon philosophy, that it is the mere analysis of language, such as members of 1930s’ Vienna Circle including Rudolf Carnap and A.J. Ayer, as well as some philosophers at the University of Oxford in the 1950s inspired by the ideas of Ludwig Wittgenstein. The problems tended to concern whether philosophical questions really are nonsensical, linguistic constructions with the mere illusion of depth. Related to that is the more pressing problem of whether philosophical disputes are merely verbal, pointless disagreements over language. This thesis in philosophy of language, or philosophical methodology, explores the problem of verbal disputes: that there may be many of them—or are there?—and that they are pointless—or are they? It starts by motivating the idea with a focus on the way it is presented in the philosophical paper “Verbal Disputes” by David Chalmers (2011) (chapter1). Then some arguments for and against the idea that philosophy is dominated by verbal disputes are discussed along with the idea that philosophical questions are questions of language and in what way mere words should matter to philosophers (chapter 2). Lastly, a response to the problem is discussed and dismissed. It says that philosophical disputes can be understood as disputes that are verbal but substantive nevertheless, what David Plunkett (2013, 2014, 2016) and others call “metalinguistic negotiations” (chapter 3). I attempt to maximize the magnitude of the arguments in “Verbal Disputes”, and offer a less diplomatic reading by which is a radical paper. I conclude that Plunkett’s theory in “Which Concepts Should we Use? Metalinguistic Negotiations and the Methodology of Philosophy” cannot provide a solution to the problems it poses. The thesis first and foremost renders the two authors’ statements, but aims to place the tension between them within a wider philosophical context. The author’s perspective that plays this part in this is made clear by such as “I think,” and “…it seems reasonable to suppose,” and contributions coming from me are otherwise confined to the more speculative, less analytical ends of each chapter, or opinionated conclusions. Typical analytical tools like the use/mention distinction and stipulative definitions are used, and when literature is surveyed and compared their terminology are merged, and textual references are given to primary sources. Footnotes contain helpful information, credit, and further reading. References are in the text and the literature list contains the full sources as well as works on which rely the provided interpretations. iii Acknowledgements The thought of being trapped within one’s own language, philosophizing privately in a system of ideas that makes sense only to oneself, isn’t it the worst? The esteemed fellow students and academic acquaintances that have helped me in this project have made sure that this dissertation is not a verbal dispute, and I am only the mediator between their many interesting perspectives, although they might not agree with the interpretations and arguments provided in this thesis. For reading and discussion, I am thankful to Conrad Bakka, Mark-Oliver Casper, Jørgen Dyrsdad, Patrick J. Winther-Larsen, Erlend Finke Owesen, and Hilde Vinje. And also to Derek Ball, Hannah Ginsborg, David Plunkett, Shamik Dasgupta, and Mons Andreas Nyquist for illuminating discussions, and special thanks for writing help to Herman Cappelen and Barry Stroud. Thanks also for funding from Centre for the Study of Mind in Nature (CSMN) and from Concept Lab at Instutitt for filosofi, ide-, og kunsthistorie og klassiske språk, Universitetet i Oslo. I became interested in this topic seeing a talk by Matti Eklund titled “Philosophy as Conceptual Engineering” at the Nordphil conference at the University of Oslo in 2015, and developed the interest as a result of a very engaging seminar the same year at the University of Uppsala, “Metaontology: Themes from Carnap and Quine.” L.F.F. iv Table of Contents Abstract .................................................................................................................................................................................... i Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents ............................................................................................................................... iv Introduction ........................................................................................................................................ vi I. What is a verbal dispute? ....................................................................................................................................................... vi II. Is there a problem of verbal disputes in philosophy? ....................................................................................... viii III. Substantive verbal disputes ................................................................................................................................................. xi IV. “Philosophy as Conceptual Engineering” ...................................................................................................................xiv V. Thesis statement: If philosophy is verbal, it is verbal in the bad way ......................................................xvi VI. Disposition .................................................................................................................................................................................. xvii Chapter one—David Chalmers on verbal disputes 1.1. Verbal disputes defined ........................................................................................................................................................... 2 1.2. Substantivity and pointlessness ......................................................................................................................................... 9 1.3. Can there be broadly verbal disputes? ........................................................................................................................ 11 1.4. A heuristics oriented theory .............................................................................................................................................. 17 1.5. The method applied to philosophical disputes ...................................................................................................... 24 1.6. The subscript gambit.............................................................................................................................................................. 30 1.7. “Answers are answers” ......................................................................................................................................................... 34 1.8. Which disputes are verbal? ................................................................................................................................................ 37 1.9. Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................................................... 43 Chapter two—Against the idea of theoretically conflicting conceptual analyses 2.1. Conceptual Analysis ............................................................................................................................................................ 47 2.2. Real Definition ......................................................................................................................................................................... 51 2.3. Questions of language and questions of reality ............................................................................................. 56 A summary of the argument .......................................................................................... 58 Externalism and natural kinds—Are questions about language questions about reality? ................................................................................................ 59 Linguistic evidence, contextualism, and transcendental arguments— Are questions about reality questions about language? .................................................. 61 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................
Recommended publications
  • Conceptual Engineering, Truth, and Efficacy

    Conceptual Engineering, Truth, and Efficacy

    Conceptual engineering, truth, and efficacy Jennifer Nado Synthese An International Journal for Epistemology, Methodology and Philosophy of Science ISSN 0039-7857 Synthese DOI 10.1007/s11229-019-02096-x 1 23 Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Nature B.V.. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be self-archived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com”. 1 23 Author's personal copy Synthese https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02096-x S.I. : KNOWLEDGE AND JUSTIFICATION, NEW PERSPECTIVES Conceptual engineering, truth, and efficacy Jennifer Nado1 Received: 18 October 2017 / Accepted: 16 January 2019 © Springer Nature B.V. 2019 Abstract Traditional views on philosophical methodology characterize our primary philosoph- ical goal as production of a successful conceptual analysis. The notion of conceptual analysis, however, faces several challenges—from experimental philosophy to more traditional worries such as the paradox of analysis. This paper explores an alternate
  • Conceptual Engineering and Conceptual Ethics OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 17/12/2019, Spi OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 17/12/2019, Spi

    Conceptual Engineering and Conceptual Ethics OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 17/12/2019, Spi OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 17/12/2019, Spi

    OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 17/12/2019, SPi Conceptual Engineering and Conceptual Ethics OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 17/12/2019, SPi OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 17/12/2019, SPi Conceptual Engineering and Conceptual Ethics Alexis Burgess, Herman Cappelen, and David Plunkett 1 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 17/12/2019, SPi 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © the several contributors 2020 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted First Edition published in 2020 Impression: 1 Some rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, for commercial purposes, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. This is an open access publication, available online and distributed under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution – Non Commercial – No Derivatives 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), a copy of which is available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of this licence should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2019946746 ISBN 978–0–19–880185–6 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198801856.003.0001 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A.
  • Conceptual Re-Engineering: from Explication to Reflective Equilibrium

    Conceptual Re-Engineering: from Explication to Reflective Equilibrium

    This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Synthese. The final authenticated version is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1596-4 Conceptual Re-Engineering: From Explication to Reflective Equilibrium Georg Brun ([email protected]) Abstract Carnap and Goodman developed methods of conceptual re-engineering known respectively as explication and reflective equilibrium. These methods aim at advancing theories by developing concepts that are simultaneously guided by pre-existing concepts and intended to replace these concepts. This paper shows that Carnap’s and Goodman’s methods are historically closely related, analyses their structural interconnections, and argues that there is great systematic potential in interpreting them as aspects of one method, which ultimately must be conceived as a component of theory development. The main results are: an adequate method of conceptual re-engineering must focus not on individual concepts but on systems of concepts and theories; the linear structure of Carnapian explication must be replaced by a process of mutual adjustments as described by Goodman; Carnap’s condition of similarity can be analysed into two components, one securing a relation to the specific extensions of the pre-existing concepts, one regulating the transition to the new system of concepts; these two criteria of adequacy can be built into Goodman’s account of reflective equilibrium to ensure that the resulting concepts promote theoretical virtues while being sufficiently similar to the concepts we started out with. 1. Introduction Philosophers and scientists develop concepts to solve theoretical and practical problems. Examples range from newly coined terms such as “speciesism” in ethics and “quark” in physics, the introduction of new uses for old words such as “ring” in mathematics and “frame” in modal logic, to re-definitions of concepts in use, for example, terrorist1 in political philosophy, work in economics and planet in astronomy.
  • Conceptual Engineering Via Experimental Philosophy

    Conceptual Engineering Via Experimental Philosophy

    Inquiry An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy ISSN: 0020-174X (Print) 1502-3923 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/sinq20 Conceptual engineering via experimental philosophy Jennifer Nado To cite this article: Jennifer Nado (2019): Conceptual engineering via experimental philosophy, Inquiry, DOI: 10.1080/0020174X.2019.1667870 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/0020174X.2019.1667870 Published online: 17 Sep 2019. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 359 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=sinq20 INQUIRY https://doi.org/10.1080/0020174X.2019.1667870 Conceptual engineering via experimental philosophy Jennifer Nado Department of Philosophy, University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong ABSTRACT Conceptual engineering provides a prima facie attractive alternative to traditional, conceptual analysis based approaches to philosophical method – particularly for those with doubts about the epistemic merits of intuition. As such, it seems to be a natural fit for those persuaded by the critiques of intuition offered by experimental philosophy. Recently, a number of authors [Schupbach, J. 2015. “Experimental Explication.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 94 (3): 672–710; Shepherd, J., and J. Justus. 2015. “X-Phi and Carnapian Explication.” Erkenntnis 80 (2): 381–402; Fisher, J. 2015. “Pragmatic Experimental Philosophy.” Philosophical Psychology 28: 412–433; Machery, E. 2017. Philosophy Within its Proper Bounds. Oxford University Press] have suggested that experimental philosophy might be employed in service of conceptual engineering. In this paper, I provide a novel argument for x-phi’s relevance to conceptual engineering, based on a ‘functionalist’ approach to conceptual engineering.