{"id":3208,"date":"2012-08-21T22:23:54","date_gmt":"2012-08-21T21:23:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/?p=3208"},"modified":"2012-08-21T22:23:54","modified_gmt":"2012-08-21T21:23:54","slug":"some-quotes-from-every-thing-must-go-ladymann-ross-and-others","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/2012\/08\/some-quotes-from-every-thing-must-go-ladymann-ross-and-others\/","title":{"rendered":"Some quotes from Every Thing Must Go (Ladymann, Ross, and others)"},"content":{"rendered":"

every thing must go<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Preface<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

This is a polemical book. One of its main contentions is that contemporary<\/span><\/p>\n

analytic metaphysics, a professional activity engaged in by some extremely<\/span><\/p>\n

intelligent and morally serious people, fails to qualify as part of the enlightened<\/span><\/p>\n

pursuit of objective truth, and should be discontinued.We think it is impossible<\/span><\/p>\n

to argue for a point like this without provoking some anger. Suggesting that<\/span><\/p>\n

a group of highly trained professionals have been wasting their talents\u2014and,<\/span><\/p>\n

worse, sowing systematic confusion about the nature of the world, and how to<\/span><\/p>\n

\ufb01nd out about it\u2014isn\u2019t something one can do in an entirely generous way. Let<\/span><\/p>\n

us therefore stress that we wrote this book not in a spirit of hostility towards<\/span><\/p>\n

philosophy or our fellow philosophers, but rather the opposite. We care a great<\/span><\/p>\n

deal about philosophy, and are therefore distressed when we see its reputation<\/span><\/p>\n

harmed by its engagement with projects and styles of reasoning we believe bring<\/span><\/p>\n

it into disrepute, especially among scientists. We recognize that we may be<\/span><\/p>\n

regarded as a bit rough on some other philosophers, but our targets are people<\/span><\/p>\n

with considerable in\ufb02uence rather than novitiates. We think the current degree<\/span><\/p>\n

of dominance of analytic metaphysics within philosophy is detrimental to the<\/span><\/p>\n

health of the subject, and make no apologies for trying to counter it.<\/span><\/p>\n

–<\/span><\/p>\n

1<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

In Defence of Scientism<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The revival ofmetaphysics after the implosion of logical positivismwas accom-<\/span><\/p>\n

panied by the ascendancy of naturalism in philosophy, and so it seemed obvious<\/span><\/p>\n

to many that metaphysics ought not to be \u2018revisionary\u2019 but \u2018descriptive\u2019 (in Peter<\/span><\/p>\n

Strawson\u2019s terminology, 1959). That is, rather than metaphysicians using ratio-<\/span><\/p>\n

nal intuition to work out exactly how the absolute comes to self-consciousness,<\/span><\/p>\n

they ought instead to turn to science and concentrate on explicating the deep<\/span><\/p>\n

structural claims about the nature of reality implicit in our best theories. So, for<\/span><\/p>\n

example, Special Relativity ought to dictate the metaphysics of time, quantum<\/span><\/p>\n

physics the metaphysics of substance, and chemistry and evolutionary biology<\/span><\/p>\n

the metaphysics of natural kinds. However, careful work by various philosophers<\/span><\/p>\n

of science has shown us that this task is not straightforward because science,<\/span><\/p>\n

usually and perhaps always, underdetermines the metaphysical answers we are<\/span><\/p>\n

seeking. (See French 1998, 93). Many people have taken this in their stride and<\/span><\/p>\n

set about exploring the various options that are available. Much excellent work<\/span><\/p>\n

has resulted.\u2079 However, there has also been another result of the recognition that<\/span><\/p>\n

science doesn\u2019t wear metaphysics on its sleeve, namely the resurgence of the kind<\/span><\/p>\n

of metaphysics that \ufb02oats entirely free of science. Initially granting themselves<\/span><\/p>\n

permission to do a bit of metaphysics that seemed closely tied to, perhaps even<\/span><\/p>\n

important to, the success of the scienti\ufb01c project, increasing numbers of philoso-<\/span><\/p>\n

phers lost their positivistic spirit. The result has been the rise to dominance of<\/span><\/p>\n

projects in analytic metaphysics that have almost nothing to do with (actual)<\/span><\/p>\n

science. Hence there are now, once again, esoteric debates about substance,<\/span><\/p>\n

universals, identity, time, properties, and so on, which make little or no reference<\/span><\/p>\n

to science, and worse, which seem to presuppose that science must be irrelevant<\/span><\/p>\n

to their resolution. They are based on prioritizing armchair intuitions about the<\/span><\/p>\n

nature of the universe over scienti\ufb01c discoveries. Attaching epistemic signi\ufb01cance<\/span><\/p>\n

to metaphysical intuitions is anti-naturalist for two reasons. First, it requires<\/span><\/p>\n

ignoring the fact that science, especially physics, has shown us that the universe<\/span><\/p>\n

is very strange to our inherited conception of what it is like. Second, it requires<\/span><\/p>\n

ignoring central implications of evolutionary theory, and of the cognitive and<\/span><\/p>\n

behavioural sciences, concerning the nature of our minds.<\/span><\/p>\n

–<\/span><\/p>\n

1.2.1 Intuitions and common sense in metaphysics<\/span><\/p>\n

The idea that intuitions are guides to truth, and that they constitute the basic<\/span><\/p>\n

data for philosophy, is of course part of the Platonic and Cartesian rationalist<\/span><\/p>\n

tradition.\u00b9\u2070 However, we have grounds that Plato and Descartes lacked for<\/span><\/p>\n

thinking that much of what people \ufb01nd intuitive is not innate, but is rather a<\/span><\/p>\n

developmental and educational achievement. What counts as intuitive depends<\/span><\/p>\n

partly on our ontogenetic cognitive makeup and partly on culturally speci\ufb01c<\/span><\/p>\n

learning. Intuitions are the basis for, and are reinforced and modi\ufb01ed by,<\/span><\/p>\n

everyday practical heuristics for getting around in the world under various<\/span><\/p>\n

resource (including time) pressures, and navigating social games; they are not<\/span><\/p>\n

cognitive gadgets designed to produce systematically worthwhile guidance in<\/span><\/p>\n

either science or metaphysics. In light of the dependence of intuitions on species,<\/span><\/p>\n

cultural, and individual learning histories, we should expect developmental and<\/span><\/p>\n

cultural variation in what is taken to be intuitive, and this is just what we \ufb01nd. In<\/span><\/p>\n

the case of judgements about causes, for example,Morris et al. (1995) report that<\/span><\/p>\n

Chinese and American subjects differed with respect to how they spontaneously<\/span><\/p>\n

allocated causal responsibility to agents versus environmental factors. Given<\/span><\/p>\n

that the \u2018common sense\u2019 of many contemporary philosophers is shaped and<\/span><\/p>\n

supplemented by ideas from classical physics, the locus of most metaphysical<\/span><\/p>\n

discussions is an image of the world that sits unhappily between the manifest<\/span><\/p>\n

image and an out of date scienti\ufb01c image.\u00b9\u00b9<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

While contemporary physics has become even more removed from common<\/span><\/p>\n

sense than classical physics, we also have other reasons to doubt that our common<\/span><\/p>\n

sense image of the world is an appropriate basis for metaphysical theorizing.<\/span><\/p>\n

Evolution has endowed us with a generic theory or model of the physical world.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is evident from experiments with very young children, who display surprise<\/span><\/p>\n

and increased attention when physical objects fail to behave in standard ways. In<\/span><\/p>\n

particular, they expect ordinary macroscopic objects to persist over time, and not<\/span><\/p>\n

to be subject to fusion or \ufb01ssion (Spelke et al. 1995). For example, if a ball moves<\/span><\/p>\n

behind a screen and then two balls emerge from the other side, or vice versa,<\/span><\/p>\n

infants are astonished. We have been equipped with a conception of the nature<\/span><\/p>\n

of physical objects which has been transformed into a foundational metaphysics<\/span><\/p>\n

of individuals, and a combinatorial and compositional conception of reality that<\/span><\/p>\n

is so deeply embedded in philosophy that it is shared as a system of \u2018obvious\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

presuppositions by metaphysicians who otherwise disagree profoundly.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This metaphysics was well suited to the corpuscularian natural philosophy of<\/span><\/p>\n

Descartes, Boyle, Gassendi, and Locke. Indeed, the primary qualities of matter<\/span><\/p>\n

which became the ontological basis of the mechanical philosophy are largely<\/span><\/p>\n

properties which form part of the manifest image of the world bequeathed to<\/span><\/p>\n

us by our natural history. That natural history has been a parochial one, in the<\/span><\/p>\n

sense that we occupy a very restricted domain of space and time. We experience<\/span><\/p>\n

events that last from around a tenth of a second to years. Collective historical<\/span><\/p>\n

memory may expand that to centuries, but no longer. Similarly, spatial scales of<\/span><\/p>\n

a millimetre to a few thousand miles are all that have concerned us until recently.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet science has made us aware of how limited our natural perspective is. Protons,<\/span><\/p>\n

for example, have an effective diameter of around 10\u221215m, while the diameter of<\/span><\/p>\n

the visible universe is more than 1019 times the radius of the Earth. The age of<\/span><\/p>\n

the universe is supposed to be of the order of 10 billion years. Even more homely<\/span><\/p>\n

sciences such as geology require us to adopt time scales that make all of human<\/span><\/p>\n

history seem like a vanishingly brief event.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As LewisWolpert (1992) chronicles,modern science has consistently shown us<\/span><\/p>\n

that extrapolating our pinched perspective across unfamiliar scales, magnitudes,<\/span><\/p>\n

and spatial and temporal distances misleads us profoundly. Casual inspection<\/span><\/p>\n

and measurement along scales we are used to suggest that we live in a Euclidean<\/span><\/p>\n

space; General Relativity says that we do not. Most people, Wolpert reports, are<\/span><\/p>\n

astounded to be told that there are more molecules in a glass of water than there<\/span><\/p>\n

are glasses of water in the oceans, and more cells in one human \ufb01nger than there<\/span><\/p>\n

are people in the world (ibid. 5). Inability to grasp intuitively the vast time scales<\/span><\/p>\n

on which natural selection works is almost certainly crucial to the success of<\/span><\/p>\n

creationists in perpetuating foolish controversies about evolution (Kitcher 1982).<\/span><\/p>\n

The problems stemming from unfamiliar measurement scales are just the tip of<\/span><\/p>\n

an iceberg of divergences between everyday expectations and scienti\ufb01c \ufb01ndings.<\/span><\/p>\n

No one\u2019s intuitions, in advance of the relevant science, told them that white<\/span><\/p>\n

light would turn out to have compound structure, that combustion primarily<\/span><\/p>\n

involves something being taken up rather than given off (Wolpert 1992, 4), that<\/span><\/p>\n

birds are the only living descendants of dinosaurs, or that Australia is presently<\/span><\/p>\n

on its way to a collision with Alaska. AsWolpert notes, science typically explains<\/span><\/p>\n

the familiar in terms of the unfamiliar. Thus he rightly says that \u2018both the ideas<\/span><\/p>\n

that science generates and the way in which science is carried out are entirely<\/span><\/p>\n

counter-intuitive and against common sense\u2014by which I mean that scienti\ufb01c<\/span><\/p>\n

ideas cannot be acquired by simple inspection of phenomena and that they<\/span><\/p>\n

are very often outside everyday experience\u2019 (ibid. 1). He later strengthens the<\/span><\/p>\n

point: \u2018I would almost contend that if something \ufb01ts with common sense it<\/span><\/p>\n

almost certainly isn\u2019t science\u2019 (ibid. 11). B. F. Skinner characteristically avoids<\/span><\/p>\n

all waf\ufb02ing on the issue: \u2018What, after all, have we to show for non-scienti\ufb01c or<\/span><\/p>\n

pre-scienti\ufb01c good judgment, or common sense, or the insights gained through<\/span><\/p>\n

personal experience? It is science or nothing\u2019 (Skinner 1971, 152\u20133).<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Lewis famously advocated a metaphysical methodology based on subjecting<\/span><\/p>\n

rival hypotheses to a cost\u2013bene\ufb01t analysis. Usually there are two kinds of cost<\/span><\/p>\n

associated with accepting a metaphysical thesis. The \ufb01rst is accepting some kind<\/span><\/p>\n

of entity into one\u2019s ontology, for example, abstracta, possibilia, or a relation<\/span><\/p>\n

of primitive resemblance. The second is relinquishing some intuitions, for<\/span><\/p>\n

example, the intuition that causes antedate their effects, that dispositions reduce<\/span><\/p>\n

to categorical bases, or that facts about identity over time supervene on facts<\/span><\/p>\n

about instants of time. It is taken for granted that abandoning intuitions should<\/span><\/p>\n

be regarded as a cost rather than a bene\ufb01t. By contrast, as naturalists we are<\/span><\/p>\n

not concerned with preserving intuitions at all, and argue for the wholescale<\/span><\/p>\n

abandonment of those associated with the image of the world as composed of<\/span><\/p>\n

little things, and indeed of the more basic intuition that there must be something<\/span><\/p>\n

of which the world is made.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There are many examples of metaphysicians arguing against theories by<\/span><\/p>\n

pointing to unintuitive consequences, or comparing theories on the basis of<\/span><\/p>\n

the quantity and quality of the intuitions with which they con\ufb02ict. Indeed,<\/span><\/p>\n

proceeding this way is more or less standard. Often, what is described as intuitive<\/span><\/p>\n

or counterintuitive is recondite. For example, L. A. Paul (2004, 171) discusses<\/span><\/p>\n

the substance theory that makes the de re modal properties of objects primitive<\/span><\/p>\n

consequences of their falling under the sortals that they do: \u2018A statue is essentially<\/span><\/p>\n

statue shaped because it falls under the statue-sort, so cannot persist through<\/span><\/p>\n

remoulding into a pot\u2019 (171). This view apparently has \u2018intuitive appeal\u2019, but<\/span><\/p>\n

sadly, \u2018any counterintuitive consequences of the view are dif\ufb01cult to explain<\/span><\/p>\n

or make palatable\u2019. The substance theory implies that two numerically distinct<\/span><\/p>\n

objects such as a lump of bronze and a statue can share their matter and their<\/span><\/p>\n

region, but this \u2018is radically counterintuitive, for it seems to contradict our usual<\/span><\/p>\n

way of thinking aboutmaterial objects as individuated by theirmatter and region\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

(172). Such ways of thinking are not \u2018usual\u2019 except among metaphysicians and<\/span><\/p>\n

we do not share them.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Paul says \u2018[I]t seems, at least prima facie, that modal properties should super-<\/span><\/p>\n

vene on the nonmodal properties shared by the statue and the lump\u2019 (172).<\/span><\/p>\n

This is the kind of claim that is regularly made in the metaphysics literature.<\/span><\/p>\n

We have no idea whether it is true, and we reject the idea that such claims can<\/span><\/p>\n

be used as data for metaphysical theorizing. Paul summarizes the problem for<\/span><\/p>\n

the advocate of substance theory as follows: \u2018This leaves him in the unfortunate<\/span><\/p>\n

position of being able to marshal strong and plausible commonsense intuitions<\/span><\/p>\n

to support his view but of being unable to accommodate these intuitions in<\/span><\/p>\n

a philosophically respectable way\u2019 (172). So according to Paul, metaphysics<\/span><\/p>\n

proceeds by attempts to construct theories that are intuitive, commonsensical,<\/span><\/p>\n

palatable, and philosophically respectable. The criteria of adequacy for meta-<\/span><\/p>\n

physical systems have clearly come apart from anything to do with the truth.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rather they are internal and peculiar to philosophy, they are semi-aesthetic,<\/span><\/p>\n

and they have more in common with the virtues of story-writing than with<\/span><\/p>\n

science.<\/span><\/p>\n

–<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1.1 we announced our resistance to the \u2018domestication\u2019 of science. It would<\/span><\/p>\n

be easy to get almost any contemporary philosopher to agree that domestication<\/span><\/p>\n

is discreditable if the home for which someone tries to make science tame is<\/span><\/p>\n

a populist environment. Consider, for example, the minor industry that seeks<\/span><\/p>\n

to make sense of quantum mechanics by analogies with Eastern mysticism.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is obviously, in an intellectual context much less rigorous than that of<\/span><\/p>\n

professional philosophy, an attempt to domesticate physics by explaining it in<\/span><\/p>\n

terms of things that common sense thinks it comprehends. Few philosophers<\/span><\/p>\n

will regard the gauzy analogies found in this genre as being of the slightest<\/span><\/p>\n

metaphysical interest. Yet are quantum processes any more like those described<\/span><\/p>\n

by Newtonian physics than they are like the temporal and spatial dislocations<\/span><\/p>\n

imagined by mystics, which ground the popular comparisons? People who<\/span><\/p>\n

know almost no formal physics are encouraged by populists to \ufb01nd quantum<\/span><\/p>\n

mechanics less wild by comparing it to varieties of disembodiment. Logically,<\/span><\/p>\n

this is little different from philosophers encouraging people who know a bit<\/span><\/p>\n

of physics to make quantum accounts seem less bizarre by comparing them<\/span><\/p>\n

to what they learned in A-level chemistry.\u00b2\u2078 We might thus say that whereas<\/span><\/p>\n

naturalistic metaphysics ought to be a branch of the philosophy of science, much<\/span><\/p>\n

metaphysics that pays lip-service to naturalism is really philosophy of A-level<\/span><\/p>\n

chemistry.<\/span><\/p>\n

–<\/span><\/p>\n

and then i got bored with the next parts.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

every thing must go   Preface This is a polemical book. One of its main contentions is that contemporary analytic metaphysics, a professional activity engaged in by some extremely intelligent and morally serious people, fails to qualify as part of the enlightened pursuit of objective truth, and should be discontinued.We think it is impossible to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,1457],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-meta","category-metaphysics","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3208"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3210,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3208\/revisions\/3210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}