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Single Idea 20728

[filed under theme 1. Philosophy / E. Nature of Metaphysics / 2. Possibility of Metaphysics ]

Full Idea

Despair over metaphysics will not change until it has shaken off the incubus of a perverted epistemology, which has left thought in a hopeless tangle - until common-sense critical realism is made the starting point for investigating reality.

Gist of Idea

Metaphysics is hopeless with its present epistemology; common-sense realism is needed

Source

Stephen S. Colvin (The Common-Sense View of Reality [1902], p.144)

Book Ref

-: 'Philosophical Review' [-], p.144

A Reaction

It seems to me that this is what has happened to analytic metaphysics since Kripke. Careful discussions about the nature of an object, or a category, or a property, are relying on unquestioned robust realism. Quite right too.

Related Idea

Idea 20727 Common-sense realism rests on our interests and practical life [Colvin]

The 18 ideas with the same theme [possibility of abstract wisdom through pure thought]:

7918 Kant turned metaphysics into epistemology, ignoring Aristotle's 'being qua being' [Kant, by Macdonald,C]
21438 Metaphysics might do better to match objects to our cognition (and not start with the objects) [Kant]
16611 You just can't stop metaphysical speculation, in any mature mind [Kant]
5586 The voyage of reason may go only as far as the coastline of experience reaches [Kant]
8107 The love of certainty holds us back in metaphysics [Joubert]
15612 Older metaphysics naively assumed that thought grasped things in themselves [Hegel]
7080 Metaphysics divided the old unified Greek world into two [Nietzsche, by Critchley]
20728 Metaphysics is hopeless with its present epistemology; common-sense realism is needed [Colvin]
5432 Metaphysics cannot give knowledge of the universe as a whole [Russell]
13939 No possible evidence could decide the reality of numbers, so it is a pseudo-question [Carnap]
16395 Kripke separated semantics from metaphysics, rather than linking them, making the latter independent [Kripke, by Stalnaker]
12771 Is it likely that a successful, coherent, explanatory ontological hypothesis is true? [Fraassen]
12027 There must be a plausible epistemological theory alongside any metaphysical theory [Forbes,G]
15053 If metaphysics can't be settled, it hardly matters whether it makes sense [Fine,K]
18506 Questions of explanation should not be confused with metaphyics [Heil]
14721 Metaphysical enquiry can survive if its conclusions are tentative [Sider]
15010 Your metaphysics is 'cheating' if your ontology won't support the beliefs you accept [Sider]
14912 There is no test for metaphysics, except devising alternative theories [Ladyman/Ross]