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13737
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The empiricist says that metaphysics is meaningless, rather than false [Schlick]
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Full Idea:
The empiricist does not say to the metaphysician 'what you say is false', but 'what you say asserts nothing at all!' He does not contradict him, but says 'I don't understand you'.
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From:
Moritz Schlick (Positivism and Realism [1934], p.107), quoted by Jonathan Schaffer - On What Grounds What 1.1
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A reaction:
I take metaphysics to be meaningful, but at such a high level of abstraction that it is easy to drift into vague nonsense, and incredibly hard to assess what is meant, and whether it is correct. The truths of metaphysics are not recursive.
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12727
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It's impossible, but imagine a body carrying on normally, but with no mind [Leibniz]
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Full Idea:
If it could be supposed that a body exists without a mind, then a man would do everything in the same way as if he did not have a mind, and men would speak and write the same things, without knowing what they do. ...But this supposition is impossible.
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From:
Gottfried Leibniz (Paper of December 1676 [1676], A6.3.400), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 5
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A reaction:
This is clearly the zombie dream, three centuries before Robert Kirk's modern invention of the idea. Leibniz's reason for denying the possibility of zombies won't be the modern physicalist reason.
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