9217
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Modern empirical metaphysics focuses on ontological commitments of discourse, or on presuppositions [Loux/Zimmerman]
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Full Idea:
The empiricist revival of metaphysics came with Quine, who focused on ontological commitments associated with accepting a body of discourse, and Strawson, asking about the presuppositions of our conceptual practices.
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From:
M Loux / D Zimmerman (Intro to Oxford Hndbk of Metaphysics [2003])
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A reaction:
I find myself preferring the British approach. I can discourse about things without ontological commitment, and utter truths about non-existent things. I really yearn, though, for the third way - actually reasoning towards knowing what's out there.
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20947
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Thoughts are learnt through words, so language shows the limits and shape of our knowledge [Herder]
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Full Idea:
If it is true that we cannot think without thoughts, and that we learn to think through words: then language gives the whole of human knowledge its limits and outline.
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From:
Johann Gottfried Herder (On Recent German Literature. Fragments [1767], p.373), quoted by Andrew Bowie - Introduction to German Philosophy
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A reaction:
Deomonstrating that Frege's famous 1884 'linguistic turn', immortalised by Dummett, was actually the continuation of a long focus on language in German philosophy. Non-verbal animals very obviously think.
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