[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
putative psychological fact has a place in the physicalists' world view if and only if it is entailed by ¦. Any putative
psychological fact which is not so entailed must be regarded by the physicalist as either a refutation of physicalism or as
merely putative. Moreover, although the argument was developed for the special case of physicalism and the
psychological, the argument did not depend crucially on matters local to that special case. We could have argued in the
same general way in the case of physicalism and the semantic, or in the case of Cartesian dualism and the semantic, or
in the case of Berkeleyan idealism and physical objects. Our argument essentially turned on just two facts about any
serious metaphysics or piece of speculative cosmology: it is discriminatory, and it claims completeness. It is these two
features of serious metaphysics, combined with the account of completeness in terms of supervenience and the way
the truth-conditions of sentences can be represented in terms of possible worlds, which mean that serious metaphysics
is committed to views about which sentences entail which other sentences.
SERIOUS METAPHYSICS AND SUPERVENIENCE 27
How does the entry by entailment thesis show the importance of conceptual analysis? That is the business of the next
chapter.
Chapter 2 The Role of Conceptual Analysis
In the first chapter we noted that serious metaphysics is discriminatory at the same time as aspiring to completeness
concerning some subject-matter or other (or, in its most ambitious manifestations, everything). In consequence, it is
committed to global supervenience theses and, thereby, to entailment theses. In particular, I argued that one well-
known manifestation of serious metaphysics, physicalism, is committed to showing that sentences about the
psychological way things are are entailed by sentences about the physical way things are.
The purpose of this chapter is to draw the connection with conceptual analysis. I offer an answer to the question: Why
should a commitment to entailment theses between matters described in some preferred vocabulary and matters
described in various other vocabularies require serious metaphysicians to do conceptual analysis?
The short answer is that conceptual analysis is the very business of addressing when and whether a story told in one
vocabulary is made true by one told in some allegedly more fundamental vocabulary. When Roderick Chisholm and A.
J. Ayer analysed knowledge as true justified belief, they were offering an account of what makes an account of how
things are told using the word knowledge true in terms of an account using the terms true , justified , and belief . It
counted as a piece of conceptual analysis because it was intended to survive the method of possible cases. They sought
to deliver an account of when various possible cases should be described as cases of knowledge that squared with our
clear intuitions. And, of course, they failed. Edmund Gettier described certain possible cases of true by accident but
nevertheless justified belief, and invited us to agree with his intuition that they should not be described as cases of
29
knowledge. We accepted his invitation
29
Edmund Gettier, Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? , Analysis, 23 (1963): 121 3. He addresses the versions of the true justified belief account in Roderick M. Chisholm,
Perceiving (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1957), and A. J. Ayer, The Problem of Knowledge (London: Macmillan, 1956). The versions are slightly different but in ways
that are irrelevant to Gettier's counter-examples.
THE ROLE OF CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS 29
and the analysis of knowledge merry-go-round started. Likewise, Hilary Putnam and Saul Kripke refuted at least some
30
(some) versions of the description theory of reference by appeal to intuitions about possible cases. They described
cases where all the descriptions required for a term T to refer to object O according to certain versions of the
description theory were satisfied by O, and yet intuition refused to assent to the view that O was in fact what was
referred to by T.
In this chapter I give the longer answer. I elaborate the picture just sketched in a way designed to make clear its
plausible theoretical underpinnings, and to meet some of the many objections that so many now have to conceptual
analysis. As in the first chapter, the example of physicalism and the psychological will be appealed to at various points.
The Theoretical Rationale for Conceptual Analysis
Avoiding Acts of Faith
If some variety of serious metaphysics is committed to an account of how things are in one vocabulary being made
true by how things are as told in some other vocabulary, it had better have to hand an account of how accounts in the
two vocabularies are interconnected. For instance, physicalists who are not eliminativists about intentional states have
to say something about how the physical story about our world makes true the intentional story about it. Otherwise their
realism about intentional states will be more an act of faith than anything else. For they will have nothing to say to one
who insists that their view that a complete account of the nature of our world can be given in purely physical terms
without recourse to intentional vocabulary is precisely the view that there are no intentional states. They will, that is,
have nothing to
30
Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980); Hilary Putnam, The Meaning of Meaning , in his Language, Mind and Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1975).
30 THE ROLE OF CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS
say to justify calling themselves realists rather than eliminativists about intentional states. Of course, some physicalists
are happy to embrace eliminativism about intentional states, or to take a don't care attitude to the debate between
realism and eliminativism about intentional states. Paul Churchland is an example of the first, and perhaps Daniel
31
Dennett is an example of the second. But I doubt if there are any physicalists happy to embrace eliminativism about,
or to take a don't care attitude to, everything as described in a vocabulary other than the austere physical one. Surely it is
beyond serious question that at least some of: rivers, inflation, explosions, buildings, and wars exist. Some existential
claims expressed in a language other than the austerely physical are true. It follows that every physicalist must address
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]