Timeline for Is metaphysical necessity an unambiguous concept, and if so, how do we capture it?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
15 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Mar 23, 2023 at 21:03 | comment | added | Dcleve | The example cases in the answer above, under the subhead "Empirical critique of Kripke" | |
| Mar 23, 2023 at 20:49 | comment | added | PW_246 | Logical incoherence is the alternative to an incomplete understanding. To which example cases do you refer? | |
| Mar 23, 2023 at 20:32 | comment | added | Dcleve | @RW_123 -- I am an empiricist. Empiricism accepts that we often are operating in a situation where we cannot reach logical closure on our models. Empiricists are pragmatists, not analytic philosophers. Logical incoherence comes with the territory of incomplete understanding. The desire to postulate metaphysical necessity because of its convenience to close the logic of a worldview, is vastly outweighed by all of the example cases it was inferred from, being falsified. | |
| Mar 23, 2023 at 18:36 | comment | added | PW_246 | First of all, beware of the logical commitments your doubts entail, especially about personal identity. Secondly, I don’t believe that metaphysical or physical necessity has to do with metaphysical or physical laws, but rather with the natural potency/power of an entity by what it is, and with how entities relate given their nature. | |
| Mar 23, 2023 at 13:41 | comment | added | Dcleve | @RW_123 Whoops, forgot to AT you. | |
| Mar 23, 2023 at 13:39 | comment | added | Dcleve | Kripke argued that there are physical facts (and verbal facts) which are necessary in this world, and across all possible worlds, even if they are not logically necessary. For the physical facts, he relied upon claims about the unbreakablility of physical laws which physics does not accept, and upon the cross-world applicability of those laws, also which physics does not accept. For the linguistic cases, he relied upon intuitions of personal identity, which are easy to challenge from basically any mind-body theory. His thought problems are misleading intuition pumps, and conclusion false. | |
| Mar 23, 2023 at 13:25 | comment | added | PW_246 | Your response conflates the practice and concepts of science as it exists with those to which they refer. There is a distinction to be made between a natural cause and a law of nature. Metaphysical necessity is all about natural causes in the most abstract sense, whereas I’d argue that physical necessity is about natural causes in a given physical universe. | |
| Feb 13, 2023 at 16:38 | comment | added | J D | Let us continue this discussion in chat. | |
| Feb 13, 2023 at 6:22 | comment | added | Dcleve | @JD Quine was trained by Carnap, and mistakenly considered Carnap's approach to be "empiricism". Read Popper on how science is done, and you will find his words echoed in modern texts. Read Quine in Two Dogmas, and what he calls "empiricism" is almost unrecognizable today. In Two Dogmas Quine was making his break from LP -- but he was still strongly influenced. The concerns he raises are not dogmas of how science is done today -- or at the time by Popper. Popper IS science today. | |
| Feb 13, 2023 at 6:12 | comment | added | Dcleve | @JD -- Analyticity was the dominant form of academic philosophy when i was in school decades ago, and still is today. And academic philosophy is far the worse for that. But philosophy of science was and still is pragmatic empiricism, based on Popperian thinking. It was a wecome improvement in outlook. Popper fought the LPs over how to do science, and won. Discovering Popper in original texts well after graduating was a revelation, and tracing his transformation from analytic to pragmatic philosophy is still inspirational. | |
| Feb 13, 2023 at 5:45 | comment | added | J D | for the logical positivists, science IS epistemology, and language and the formal sciences are the handmaiden. That's why logical positivism is identified with the philosophy of science, and not the philosophy of reason. Carnap is famous for his ontological views supported by his views on existential quantification, not the other way around. | |
| Feb 13, 2023 at 5:42 | comment | added | J D | I would argue that the Logical Positivists are primarily positivists in their outlook, and therefore their work on truth was an means to an end, that is to demonstrate what was real. Thus THE TRUTH served the subsidiary function of THE REAL, and therefore science was a greater activity than philosophy. In fact, they so went far as to declare philosophy and the pursuit of THE TRUTH as nothing more than an exercise in language, furthering the linguistic turn, though taking a wrong turn at banishing metaphysics which is unavoidable part of theory use and generation... | |
| Feb 13, 2023 at 5:05 | comment | added | Dcleve | @JD Logical positivists believe in THE TRUTH and very clear and precise logical reasoning to arrive at it. Science, as it also in a pursuit to The Truth, is an allied activity, but lesser, a s scientists have to settle for only an approximation, not absolute truth. In contrast, pragmatists see analyticity as a rival to, and in conflict with, empiricism. This was the conflict between Popper and the Logical Positivists over how to do science. Popper won. BTW, this was a partial extract from a Kripke tribute, posted here: philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/70563/on-reading-kripke | |
| Feb 13, 2023 at 3:02 | comment | added | J D | +1 for gusto, however, you open claiming that the logical empiricists and positivists who were proponents of a form of scientism are the best example of analytical philosophers, and then go on to argue that analytic philosophers prefer to contemplate mathematics and logic to the general exclusion of science. So, which is it? Do analytical philosophers generally overstate or understate the importance of science? You can't have it both ways. | |
| Feb 12, 2023 at 23:00 | history | answered | Dcleve | CC BY-SA 4.0 |