The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics: Making Sense of Things (8 page)

Metaphysics Combined with Science
: There are various metaphysical quandaries about the existence and nature of properties or universals, such as redness. (Aristotle discusses many of these quandaries in his
Metaphysics
.) David Lewis urges that we do well to acknowledge properties if we conceive them as classes of things, actual or possible, and that we do well to acknowledge universals if we conceive them as properties of a special kind. For a property to be of this special kind, it must ‘carve reality at one of its joints’. That is, it must have some relevance to causal laws; the things that instantiate it must thereby genuinely resemble one another; and suchlike. (On this conception, redness, though it is certainly a property, is a poor candidate for being a universal.) It is in these terms, Lewis holds, that we make the best sense of science, and more specifically of physics. For we can see the purpose of physics as being to discover what universals there actually are (Lewis (
1999b
)).

Metaphysics Combined with Ethics
: Another very old metaphysical quandary is whether all propositions concerning the future are (already) true or false. (Aristotle discusses this too, in
On Interpretation
,
Ch. 9
.) Quine argues that, whatever else might be said in favour of the doctrine that all propositions concerning the future are indeed (already) true or false, that doctrine has serious ethical payoff. His argument runs as follows. Consider the following two principles: first, that conservation of the environment is necessary for the sake of people as yet unborn, and second, that birth control is necessary to combat overpopulation. Both have considerable appeal. But to accede to them both seems inconsistent. For
it seems to involve recognizing the interests of those who have not yet been born, while denying some of them the very right to life. If we acknowledge that all propositions concerning the future are (already) true or false, however, then we can dispel the apparent inconsistency. We are free to adopt a tenseless understanding of the phrase ‘there are’, and then to say that ‘there are’ people who have not yet been born: their interests must be respected. By contrast, ‘there are’ no people who have not yet been born and who never will be: birth control denies the right of life to nobody (Quine (
1987b
)).

Note that the ethical payoff here lies not in the doctrine’s helping us to live better, nor yet in its helping us to decide what counts as living better, but in its helping us to think more clearly and more effectively about our reasons for deciding as we do. Note also that, on the view of metaphysics as a creative exercise that admits of no distinction between being right and being wrong, it would be possible
both
to accept Quine’s argument
and
to believe that, for other purposes, including other ethical purposes, we do better to deny that all propositions concerning the future are (already) true or false. (Perhaps denying this helps us to think more clearly about our own commitments and responsibilities for example.
³⁸
) This would be a little like choosing to use the Celsius scale for discussing the chemical properties of water, but preferring to use the Fahrenheit scale for discussing the weather.
³⁹

Metaphysics Combined with Theology
: There is a doctrine, which we can call the doctrine of relative identity, whereby it is possible for there to be different things of a certain kind which are nevertheless the
same
thing of some other kind. A case that is often cited is that of a piece of bronze which is formed into a statue
s
₁
, say a statue of a man, then melted down, and then formed into a quite different statue
s
₂
, say a statue of a horse. In this case, an advocate of the doctrine would say, although
s
₁
is a different statue from
s
₂
, they are nevertheless the same
piece of bronze. This doctrine is defended by the Catholic philosopher P.T. Geach, one of whose own examples – surely the example that is of primary concern to him – is that of the Trinity. The doctrine of relative identity allows Geach to say that, whereas the Father is a different Person from the Son, they are the same God (Geach (
1972
); and Anscombe and Geach (
1961
), pp. 118–119).

A third way in which metaphysics is able to make a difference, and the one that seems to me the most important and the most exciting, is by providing us with radically new concepts by which to live. Here I am presupposing that we have scope, as metaphysicians, to make sense of things in ways that are radically new. In other words, I am presupposing my stance on the Novelty Question from the previous section. If I am wrong about this, then metaphysics has far less to offer than I believe – though even then there is scope for it to be involved in something similar, albeit less radical, namely the protection, nurturing, adaptation, or rejection of concepts by which we already live.

When I talk about our ‘living by’ a concept, I am alluding to the fact that some concepts are action-guiding in the sense that even to use them is to be motivated in certain ways. The paradigms are what Bernard Williams calls ‘thick’ ethical concepts. By a thick ethical concept Williams means a concept that has both a factual aspect and an ethically evaluative aspect. Thus to apply a thick ethical concept in a given situation is to say something straightforwardly false if the situation turns out not to be a certain way; but it is also ethically to appraise the situation. An example is the concept of infidelity. If I accuse you of being unfaithful, I say something that I am obliged to retract if it turns out that you have not in fact gone back on any relevant agreement, but I also thereby register my disapproval of what you have done. Another example is the concept of a promise, one of whose most striking features is that its use not only directs us in our living, but creates new possibilities for our living. You could not so much as make promises, still less confront decisions about whether to keep them or not, still
less
be motivated to keep them, if you were not part of a community that used the concept of a promise.
⁴⁰

But even someone sympathetic to this idea of an action-guiding concept might balk at the suggestion that
metaphysics
can provide us with such things. The worry would be that action-guiding concepts are insufficiently general for that. There are four points to be made in response to this worry. First, insofar as the worry is based on the thought that thick ethical concepts are insufficiently general, it is misplaced. For thick ethical concepts are not the only action-guiding concepts. Indeed, on some ways of construing
action-guidingness,
all
concepts are action-guiding.
⁴¹
Second, it is anyway not clear that thick ethical concepts are insufficiently general. The concept of freedom and the concept of a person strike me as clear examples of thick ethical concepts.
⁴²
Yet much traditional metaphysics has been concerned with those very concepts. (It is noteworthy that one of the classic metaphysical discussions of the concept of a person, namely Locke’s, includes the famous observation that ‘person’ is a forensic term.
⁴³
) Third, we should not forget a point which was implicit in something I said parenthetically in §2, that whether a concept is a metaphysical concept may admit of degree. This would allow for the possibility that metaphysics can provide us with action-guiding concepts which, though they are less general than some other concepts, are still metaphysical to some degree. Fourth, and most significant, we should in any case not assume that the only concepts that metaphysics can provide us with are metaphysical concepts. The concept of blasphemy strikes me as another clear example of a thick ethical concept. It scarcely counts as metaphysical, yet its very possibility depends on a certain kind of metaphysics. Nor is this an isolated example. Among the most general attempts to make sense of things, those that have had a religious dimension have bequeathed innumerable non-metaphysical concepts by which people have lived.

8. Prospectus

Finally in this Introduction I want to say something about the structure of this book, and in particular about its division into three parts. The division is partly chronological. The book deals with four centuries.
Part One
deals, roughly speaking, with the first two. Parts Two and Three each deal, roughly speaking, with the remaining two. It is the division between Parts Two and Three that deserves special comment.

Part Two
concerns philosophers belonging to the analytic tradition. The common name for the complement of this tradition, within recent Western philosophy, is ‘the continental tradition’. I have already intimated in the Preface my unease both about the name (which makes a particular mockery of the positioning of Frege and Collingwood, for example) and about the normal associations of the name, in particular the implied opposition between two fronts (which, as it happens, is again particularly problematical with respect to Frege and Collingwood, the first because his work connects in important ways with that of Husserl, the second because his work fails to connect in important ways with that of anyone else on the non-analytic
side). Since I have no quarrel with the idea that there is an analytic tradition, I have reacted to this unease by designating its complement, quite simply, ‘non-analytic traditions’. And these are the focus of
Part Three
.

I hope that my artless title for
Part Three
does not err in the other direction, by downplaying the many crucial connections and lines of influence between the philosophers whom I discuss there.
⁴⁴
Certainly, the non-analytic philosophy represented in that part is marked by some distinctive, if broad, features. Two of these are worth emphasizing straight away, because of their considerable importance in what is to come. First, there is a tendency to prioritize difference over identity. This is in contrast to analytic philosophy, where there is the opposite tendency. (Still, even here there is a danger of exaggeration. ‘Tendency’ is the operative word. Let us not forget that Wittgenstein considered using as a motto for his
Philosophical Investigations
a quotation from
King Lear
: ‘I’ll teach you differences.’
⁴⁵
) The second feature, by contrast, does not distinguish the philosophy represented in
Part Three
from that represented in
Part Two
. If anything, it distinguishes both of them from the philosophy represented in
Part One
.
⁴⁶
I have already mentioned it in §5. I am referring to a tendency, within metaphysics, indeed within sense-making more broadly, to focus attention on sense itself. The impact of this on the nature of metaphysics has been profound. There are times, as we shall see, when it has more or less reoriented the enterprise, turning the most general attempt to make sense of things into something like an attempt to make things of sense.

1
These are taken, respectively, from: Moore (
1953
), p. 1, emphasis removed; Dummett (
1992
), p. 133; Sellars (
1963
), p. 1; Smart (
1984
), p. 138; Hegel (
1975a
), §24, p. 36, emphasis removed; and Bradley (
1930
), p. 10. But note that G.E. Moore is giving an account of ‘the first and most important part of philosophy’ rather than defining metaphysics, while Wilfrid Sellars, similarly, is defining philosophy rather than metaphysics. On the relation between philosophy and metaphysics, see §6 in this chapter.

2
This part, or ‘class’ as it is called, is entitled ‘Abstract Relations’.

3
It even suits those who accept the necessary/contingent distinction but who think that metaphysics is fundamentally concerned with what is contingent: see e.g. Papineau (
2009
). ‘Most general’
can
be interpreted as extending to all possibilities. It need not.

4
It also of course presupposes the possibility of attempting to make sense of things. On this, see the next section.

5
This is less straightforward than I am suggesting; but the main point survives. For discussion of some of the complications, with specific reference to Wittgenstein, see Floyd (
2000
).

6
I shall return to this matter at the very end of the enquiry, in the Conclusion, §5.

7
There is in any case the point that, when someone makes sense of things in a certain way, and thinks and acts accordingly, then others who make sense of things in that same way can make sense in particular of him or her: see further Moore (
2003a
), p. 124. (The whole of that book is, in a way, a meditation on what is involved in making sense of things. My previous book, Moore (
1997a
), is likewise deeply concerned with this theme (see e.g.
Ch. 10
, §1).)