Next: About this document ...
Up: Phil. 190final_paper, Spring 14
Previous: Instructions
- Consider one of the issues debated between Carnap and Quine, and discuss
Lewiss position on the issue, with an eye towards showing how he
responds to and tries to resolve their debate. I have claimed
generally that he wants to defend what he takes to be some core part
of Carnaps view, while at the same time agreeing with much of Quines
arguments. You may or may not want to agree with me on that. Examples of
debated topics (all related to each other, of course):
- The nature of and/or need for ontological commitment. Must I decide
what (kinds of) things I take to really exist? How can or should I
make that decision? Can you tell, empirically, what decision I have
made? Can I have made the decision implicitly, without conscious
awareness of what I was doing, and if so how can it still be called a
decision? (Most relevant texts: Empiricism, Semantics and
Ontology; On Carnaps Views on Ontology; reply to Quines
Carnap and Logical Truth; Introduction to Philosophical
Papers; Holes; Languages and Language; Noneism or
Allism?; On the Plurality of Worlds 2.1, 2.8.)
- Reduction. To what extent can we eliminate some part of our vocabulary
in favor of some other, more fundamental part? Why would we want to do
that? What makes the more fundamental part more fundamental? Must
there be a unique way to carry out the reduction? Or in general: what
kind of existence and uniqueness conditions does the reduction rest
on, if any, and why or when are we justified in taking it that such
conditions hold? (Most relevant texts: Aufbau; Two Dogmas
§5; New Work, especially the sections titled ONE OVER MANY
and MINIMAL MATERIALISM; How to Define Theoretical Terms;
Holes; Counterpart Theory.)
- Meaning. What (if anything) makes linguistic signs meaningful? What,
if anything, makes it a fact, either true or false, that a
certain string of signs (i.e., string of sign types?) has a particular
extension and/or intension? What role is played, or might be
played, by the mental states of speakers? By conventions? By
metaphysical truths? You may want to distinguish between the meaning
of whole sentences and the meaning of subsentential constituents;
also, between the meaning of empirical terms or sentences and the
meaning of terms or sentences which are not empirical. (Most relevant
texts: Meaning and Synonymy in Natural Languages; Ontological
Relativity; Languages and Language; Radical Interpretation;
Noneism or Allism?; New Work, especially the section titled
THE CONTENT OF LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT; Putnams Paradox.)
- What is Lewiss overall account of the nature of philosophical argument its rules, advantages and disadvantages, and ends or goals?
Try to put together some, at least, of the pieces. For example: the
lack of knockdown arguments; the fact that such arguments would
not be nice, even if they were available; the role of ontic
disagreement (is this just one example, or is it somehow the essential
topic of philosophical dispute?); the supposed commitment of the
philosophy department, among others, to the advancement of knowledge;
the tacit treaty between schools of philosophy (that is, between
the schools of philosophy that agree to regard each other as
respectable, rather than
ratbag);
the process of getting someone to presuppose parts of your position,
fairly or unfairly (is the fair way better, and why?); the distinction
between terminological (a.k.a. semantic) disputes and other
disputes, along with the claim that both types of dispute are
important. (Most relevant texts: Introduction to Philosophical
Papers; Holes; Scorekeeping; Academic Appointments;
Noneism or Allism?; On the Plurality of Worlds 2.8.)
- Lewiss philosophy of science: what is it, and is it sufficient and
satisfactory? There are a lot of possible sub-topics here. For
example:
- The problems of induction and/or scientific realism. Why,
according to Lewis, should I base any beliefs about the actual world
on my empirical evidence, if I at the same time acknowledge that, at
some possible world, an exact duplicate of me who draws the same
conclusions (or at least, does all the intrinsic parts of
drawing those conclusion) is entirely mistaken? (For example: there is
an exact duplicate of me which is the only thing in its world;
there is a world with an initial segment that duplicates the initial
segment of ours up until just the present instant, but which
thereafter violates all of our physical laws.) (Most relevant texts:
On the Plurality of Worlds, 1.3, 1.8, 2.4, 3.2, especially the
part about alien properties, beginning p. 158; New Work,
especially the sections titled DUPLICATION, SUPERVENIENCE, AND
DIVERGENT WORLDS and MINIMAL MATERIALISM; Causation; How
to Define Theoretical Terms, especially the part towards the end
about sense and denotation, starting p. 435 in the
version up on
eCommons.)
- The problem of theoretical and/or unobservable entities. According
to Lewis, when should we believe that such things exist? When should
we stop believing that they exist (e.g.,
phlogiston,
caloric,
ether,
fire)?
What risks of error do we run, either way? What role could so-called
crucial experiments play in making a (rational) decision? What about
the discovery of a possible reduction? (On the Plurality of
Worlds, 2.4, 2.8; How to Define Theoretical Terms; New Work,
especially the section titled MINIMAL MATERIALISM; Noneism or
Allism?.)
- More generally, the issue of reductionism (and/or related questions
about the mindbody relation) could be considered from this point of
view, rather than with specific reference to the CarnapQuine
debate. What is happening, according to Lewis, when we reduce one
theory to another? Why do that? What, if any, are the ontological
presuppositions or ontological implications? (If you are interested
specifically in the mindbody issues, you may want to see
Counterparts of Persons and Their
Bodies,
and/or Mad Pain and Martian
Pain.) (Most
relevant texts: How to Define Theoretical Terms; New Work,
especially the sections titled ONE OVER MANY and MINIMAL
MATERIALISM; Holes; Counterpart Theory.)
- The nature of space and time. What makes spatiotemporal relations
especially important, and why? The fact that they, or something like
them, are used to individuate worlds, gives them a very special part
in Lewiss ontology. That part is obvious, but its worth discussing
how special role can be motivated. Why does Lewis think it
plausible that we could understand actual to mean, roughly,
standing in some spatiotemporal relation to ourselves? (Why is
that better than, for example, standing in some causal relation to
ourselves?) Whatever the answer, you could try to relate it somehow
to typical problems about space and time in philosophy of science. For
example: must the world have some determinate geometry, and if so how
could we know (or at least have some evidence as to) which geometry it
is? Must, or might, there be such a thing as absolute space, absolute
motion and absolute rest? (That is, you might try to figure out how
Lewis must answer such a question, and whether he would think the
answer is part of the benefit of his view, or, on the contrary, is
part of the price we must pay for holding his view.) (Most
relevant texts: On the Plurality of Worlds, 1.6, 1.8, 2.1;
Causation; How to Define Theoretical Terms; New Work,
especially the sections titled DUPLICATION, SUPERVENIENCE, AND
DIVERGENT WORLDS and MINIMAL MATERIALISM.)
- Lewis officially disclaims any ambition to compare his position to
Leibnizs. If you know something about Leibniz, you may want to fill
in the missing comparison. Leibniz holds that the actual world is
different from all other possible worlds in (at least) two ways: (a)
is it actual; (b) it is optimal. Also, he holds that there is a
necessary existent (God), and that both the possibility of all
possible worlds and the actuality of the actual one depend causally
(in some sense of causation!) on the (necessary) nature of that
necessary existent. Also, he hold that apparently external relations
generally, and spatiotemporal relations in particular, actually all
supervene on internal relations of representation between
monads: if monad A is spatially near to monad B, for example, then an
intrinsic duplicate of A could not be spatially distant from an
intrinsic duplicate of B. Why does, or why can, Leibniz hold these
things while Lewis does not? What is the fundamental
disagreement between them? Also: how does Leibniz fit, or not fit,
into the types of ersatzism discussed by Lewis in chapter 3 of
On the Plurality of Worlds? (Most relevant texts: almost
everything is relevant, but I guess especially On the Plurality
of Worlds, 1.6, 1.8, 2.1, 3.12, 4.13, as well as other sections
that were not assigned, especially the remainder of ch.s 3 and
4. From Leibniz, you would want to look especially at the parts of the
Monadology and the Discourse on Metaphysics having to do
with contingent and necessary truths and the nature of space,
extension, and body, beyond that a lot of things could be relevant.)
Next: About this document ...
Up: Phil. 190final_paper, Spring 14
Previous: Instructions
Abe Stone
2014-06-01