Tahko & Hofweber on the Foundations of Metaphysics
PhilosopyTV! Thomas Hofweber and myself discuss the possibility and foundations of metaphysics in the latest episode. We recorded the episode already some time ago, and I’m pleased to see that it’s now out. Thanks to David Killoren and the other folks at PhilosophyTV for making this happen.
These episodes are supposed to be fairly accessible, so we don’t go into a lot of technical detail, and have tried to avoid unnecessary jargon. To be honest, our discussion is just a brief glimpse into the very broad topic of the foundations of metaphysics — or metametapysics — but I hope that it’s of interest especially to those who may not be so familiar with the literature. For background reading, I recommend for instance Thomas’s ‘The Meta-Problem of Change‘ (2009) and my ‘In Defence of Aristotelian Metaphysics‘ (2012).
Tahko & Hofweber - PhilosophyTV
The discussion opens up with quite a long intro from Thomas, but I think it’s helpful. We then go on to discuss some more detailed topics, such as the status of mathematical objects, the epistemology of essence, and ‘esoteric’ and ‘egalitarian’ metaphysics — notions coined by Thomas.
I have to say that it’s not easy to have a discussion like this when you cannot see the other person (the video is recorded separately). What made it even stranger was that I was already at Chapel Hill at the time of recording, and we were in fact in the same building! Thomas was in his office, and I ended up using Simon Blackburn’s office. We had some technical issues as well, but the end result seems to work just fine (they did a good job with it).
Hope you enjoy it!
Thomas & Tuomas.
That’s a double act name right there.
Well, Thomas would be a fun guy to do a double act with, so I’m game!
I just got to see this and I enjoyed it. Hofweber is a good philosopher and I liked his paper in the Chalmers volume. Here are a couple potential concerns I might have with his ideas:
I’m not sure how the fact that metaphysicians use specialized terms which are not identical to the ones in everyday use or use among other disciplines is supposed to count against “esoteric” metaphysics (I wish we had a better name than this–maybe “substantive”?). Physicists use special terms which are unknown to the scientifically uninitiated, as do mathematicians and pretty much anyone belonging to any specialized science. Of course, maybe Hofweber can say that mathematical or physical concepts are ultimately in some sense “based on” the concepts in everyday use, and with training most people can come to understand them. But then that makes pretty much *any meaningful theory* legitimate it seems to me, since I would argue with Aristotle that all concepts are “based on” experience in at least some respect. And it’s not like we think we metaphysicians are just really special people who have been graced with the ability to do metaphysics; with training pretty much anyone can do it. So maybe Hofweber thinks that the terms are in fact meaningless and we don’t even know what we’re talking about. This might explain why Hofweber places a lot of emphasis on the lack of clarity or easy characterization of some of the more “esoteric” terms that we use. But if all he’s saying is that we need to elaborate and be more clear I don’t think this is a huge concern.
As far as his criticisms of Lowe’s account go, I’m not sure he’s charitably interpreting what Lowe says. Lowe isn’t saying that scientists are literally impaired from doing their work until the metaphysicians give them the green light. That would indeed be immodest. Rather, I think that we should understand metaphysicians as doing the work of making more intelligible scientific theories and facts. There are certain more general questions about the nature of reality which scientists do not answer. Questions about the nature of essence or identity or causation are more general than–and conceptually prior–to particular instances of these things. These former questions do not appear to be answered by physics, although I wouldn’t claim the distinction is too sharp, especially when we get to the more theoretical questions physicists deal in. But metaphysics tends to deal in these more general questions. This would seem to mesh well with what Lowe says, viz. that metaphysics deals with possibility, but what is actual we come to find by empirical confirmation.
I would be interested in your thoughts regarding what he says about the case of Socrates and his singleton. If I’m understanding right he says that the intuition can be explained by the fact that the singleton of Socrates conceptually contains Socrates?
I’m definitely looking forward to his upcoming book though!
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