display all the ideas for this combination of texts
4 ideas
| 16241 | The metaphysics of nature should focus on physics [Maudlin] |
| Full Idea: Metaphysics, insofar as it is concerned with the natural world, can do no better than to reflect on physics. | |
| From: Tim Maudlin (The Metaphysics within Physics [2007], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I suppose so. Physics only works at one level of description. Metaphysics often works with concepts which only emerge at a more general level than physics. There are also many metaphysical problems which are of no interest to most physicists. |
| 16257 | Kant survives in seeing metaphysics as analysing our conceptual system, which is a priori [Maudlin] |
| Full Idea: The Kantian strain survives in the notion that metaphysics is not about the world, but about our 'conceptual system', especially as what structures our thought about the world. This keeps it a priori, and so not about the world itself. | |
| From: Tim Maudlin (The Metaphysics within Physics [2007], 3) | |
| A reaction: Strawson would embody this view, I suppose. I take our conceptual system to be largely a reflection of (and even creation of) the world, and not just an arbitrary conventional attempt to grasp the world. Analysing concepts partly analyses the world. |
| 16276 | Wide metaphysical possibility may reduce metaphysics to analysis of fantasies [Maudlin] |
| Full Idea: If metaphysical possibility extends more widely than physical possibility, this may make metaphysics out to be nothing but the analysis of fantastical descriptions produced by philosophers. | |
| From: Tim Maudlin (The Metaphysics within Physics [2007], 7 Epilogue) | |
| A reaction: Maudlin wants metaphysics to be firmly constrained in its possibilities by what scientific undestanding permits, and he is right. Metaphysics must integrate into science, or wither away on the margins. |
| 13750 | Analysis aims at the structure of facts, which are needed to give a rationale to analysis [Urmson, by Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: Urmson explains the direction of analysis as 'towards a structure...more nearly similar to the structure of the fact', adding that this metaphysical picture is needed as a 'rationale of the practice of analysis'. | |
| From: report of J.O. Urmson (Philosophical Analysis [1956], p.24-5) by Jonathan Schaffer - On What Grounds What n30 | |
| A reaction: In other words, only realists can be truly motivated to keep going with analysis. Merely analysing language-games is doable, but hardly exciting. |