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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/12/2018, SPi
The Primacy
of Metaphysics
Christopher Peacocke
1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/12/2018, SPi
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
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© Christopher Peacocke 2019
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2019
Impression: 1
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You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2018959184
ISBN 978–0–19–883557–8
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Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/12/2018, SPi
Preface
The broad outline of the ideas in this book occurred to me early in 2008, and was
first presented, in exploratory form, at my summer seminar in University College
London that year. These ideas were developed in my seminars at Columbia
University and UCL, and in lectures and seminars elsewhere, in the following
decade. I make my many personal acknowledgements in a separate section below,
but I take the opportunity here to thank both of these institutions and those who
run them at both departmental and decanal level not just for support, but for
their dedication to promoting the integration of research with teaching.
The production of a book presenting this material has taken rather longer than
I might have expected, for two reasons. First, the treatment of the self and the first
person, which I had originally intended to handle as a special case of the general
approach, developed a life of its own. It was too hard to put aside a longer
discussion of that always fascinating special case, to which I devoted The Mirror
of the World (2014). Second, for five years (2011–16) I was successively chair of
Columbia’s Tenure and Promotion Committee, and the Columbia Philosophy
Department. I do not entirely regret the resultant delay in producing the book.
Both the central claim of the general material and the treatment of the self and
the first person have been modified following second and third thoughts since
I was able to return a few years ago to devote undivided attention to the issues.
The claims of this book are highly general, and whether they are true or false,
in either case there are wide ramifications. There are ramifications not just for
many areas of philosophy, but also for domains in which the considerations of
philosophy and the sciences intersect. I touch on some of these in the concluding
remarks. A very long book could be written discussing these ramifications. It is a
real question whether that would be either a feasible or even a desirable task for
one person alone. In any case, and perhaps out of necessity as well as prudence,
I have kept the discussion concise.
It is now eighteen years since I left Oxford, departing from a position with
‘Metaphysical Philosophy’ in its title. Perhaps I can at last offer this material, both
to those in the new world and the old, as an attempt at Metaphysical Philosophy.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/12/2018, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/12/2018, SPi
Contents
Introduction 1
1. Metaphysics and the Theory of Content 3
1. The Primary Thesis 3
2. Against Meaning-First Views 9
3. The Boundedness of the Conceptual 15
4. No-Priority Cases 19
5. An Argument from Rationality? 25
6. Discovery, Explanation, and a Theory of Conditions 26
7. That and How 31
8. Ramifications 33
2. Magnitudes 39
1. Seven Principles of the Metaphysics of Magnitudes 40
2. Magnitudes as Perceived 47
3. Analogue Computation and Representation 52
4. Analogue Content, Digital Content 59
5. A Response to Kuhn on Perception 68
3. Time and Temporal Content 72
1. Temporal Perception: Some Challenges 72
2. The Illusions of Subjectivism 76
3. Phenomenal Externalism 81
4. Unavailability of Constancy Accounts in the Temporal Case 85
5. Representational Preservation 91
6. Present-Tense Content: Varieties, Nature, and Deflationary Significance 96
4. The Self 106
1. The Metaphysics of Subjects and the Nature of the First Person 106
2. Some Metaphysical Principles and Their Explanation 107
3. Contrasting Subjects and Personites 115
4. What Makes the First Person Refer to a Subject? 119
5. Consequences of the Agency-Involving Account 129
5. Numbers 139
1. Tasks 139
2. Applicational Individuationism for the Natural Numbers 140
3. Relation to Neo-Fregean and Postulationist Views 148
4. From Individuation to Representation 154
5. Applicational Individuationism for the Real Numbers: A Sketch 156
6. Carnap: Differences and Affinities 166
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/12/2018, SPi
x
Bibliography 207
Index 215
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/12/2018, SPi
Introduction
There can be few issues as fundamental as the relation between the metaphysics
of some domain and our ways of thinking about it. The issue arises in every area
of thought. If the metaphysics of a domain is explanatorily more fundamental
than our ways of thinking about it, there should be features of our ways of
thinking that are explained by that metaphysics. If the opposite is true, if our ways
of thinking are explanatorily more fundamental, then what may seem to be a
feature of the metaphysics of the domain in question will really just be projections
of our ways of thinking. If neither is prior to the other, then there is some
interdependence between the metaphysics and the ways of thinking that needs
elucidation.
It is to these issues of explanatory priority that this book is devoted.
A methodology for investigating these issues has to operate both at a general
level, and at the level of particular domains and ways of thinking of them.
At the general level, we can ask what individuates a way of thinking, and we
can investigate domain-independent constraints on the relations between ways of
thinking and what is thought about. That is the general investigation I attempt in
Chapter 1 of this book. I reach the conclusion that, for reasons of principle, ways
of thinking cannot be explanatorily prior to the metaphysics of the domain. If
that conclusion is correct, we are left with two kinds of case: that in which the
metaphysics is explanatorily prior (the metaphysics-first case); and that in which
neither is explanatorily prior to the other (the no-priority case).
At the level of any particular domain, we need to provide a metaphysics for
that domain, and a corresponding elaboration of the domain-specific explanatory
relation between the metaphysics so conceived and certain ways of thinking of
the domain. In Chapters 2 through 5, I attempt that domain-specific exercise for
various subject matters. I consider the domains of perceptible extensive magni-
tudes; of time; of the self; and of numbers. In each of these cases, I argue for a
metaphysics-first view, a view that is differently realized in each case, radically so
in the noncausal case of our ways of thinking of numbers.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/12/2018, SPi
1
Metaphysics and the Theory
of Content
We can take it that the task of formulating the metaphysics of any given
domain is to characterize the nature of elements in that domain, to say what is
constitutive of those entities. Then the general answer I offer to our initial
question about the two broad areas I mentioned can be stated in this simple
Primary Thesis:
The metaphysics of a domain is involved in the philosophical explanation of
the nature of the meanings of sentences about that domain; and the meta-
physics of a domain is involved in the philosophical explanation of the nature
of intentional contents (ways of representing) concerning that domain.
So this is a metaphysics-involving thesis.
There are stronger and weaker positions that are committed to the Primary
Thesis. But first we had better clarify the Primary Thesis by explaining the many
terms of art contained in its statement.
By a ‘domain’, I mean a range of objects, in the broadest sense, and properties
and relations on those objects. By ‘the metaphysics of a domain’ I mean a theory
that states truly what is constitutive of the objects, properties, and relations of
that domain—a theory of what makes them the objects, properties, and relations
they are. We are not concerned here with what may merely be folk-metaphysics,
or a merely mentally represented metaphysics. Those are both genuine and
philosophically interesting conceptions of metaphysics, but they are both to be
distinguished from what I mean by metaphysics in stating the Primary Thesis.
I mean what is really constitutive of the objects, properties, and relations in
question. Some feature attributed in the metaphysics of a domain can be
explanatory of facts about intentional contents concerning that domain only if
the elements of the domain really do have that feature, whether or not ordinary
thought represents it as having the feature.
The entities in the domain are at the level of reference, whereas the intentional
contents and meanings are at the level of sense. So if, for instance, we are
considering the domain of spatial entities and their properties and relations,
then the relation between three events of forming an isosceles triangle would be
in the relations included in that domain. That relation is to be distinguished from
the several ways in which the relation may be given in language or in perception.
Similarly, properties are to be distinguished from concepts, which are ways in
which properties are given in thought or language. This is the same conception of
properties as outlined in Hilary Putnam’s paper ‘On Properties’ (1975). Of course
there exists the special case in which we take as the domain the domain of
concepts, notions, or senses themselves, and their properties and relations. But
then the intentional contents and meanings mentioned in the Primary Thesis for
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/12/2018, SPi
Books
Books
Books
Archives of Maryland.
Armstrong, Edward: Correspondence between William Penn and
James Logan and Others, 1870–72.
Bittinger, Lucy F.: The Germans in Colonial Times, 1901.
Cobb, S. H.: The Story of the Palatines, 1897.
Dexter, F. B.: Estimates of Population in the American Colonies,
1887.
Diffenderffer, F. R.: The German Immigration into Pennsylvania
through the Port of Philadelphia, 1700–75, 1900.
Documents relating to the Colonial History of New York.
Fiske, John: Old Virginia and Her Neighbors, 1897.
Geiser, K. F.: Redemptioners and Indentured Servants in the
Colony and Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 1901.
Massachusetts Election Sermons, 1754.
Mittelberger, Gottlieb: Journey to Pennsylvania in 1750,
translated by Eben, C. T., 1898.
New Jersey Archives.
North Carolina Colonial Documents.
Pennsylvania Colonial Records.
Proper, E. E.: Colonial Immigration Laws, Columbia College
Studies, 12:2, 1900.
Rhode Island Colonial Records.
RACIAL STUDIES
Books
Books
All the Year Round: Molly Maguire in America, New Series, 17:270,
1876.
Bailey, W. B.: The Bird of Passage, American Journal of Sociology,
18:391, 1912.
Cance, Alexander E.: Immigrant Rural Communities, The Survey,
Jan. 7, 1911; Jewish Immigrants as Tobacco Growers and
Dairymen, The Survey, Nov. 4, 1911; Piedmontese on the
Mississippi, The Survey, Sept. 2, 1911; Slav Farmers on the
“Abandoned-Farm” Area of Connecticut, The Survey, Oct. 7, 1911.
Chute, Charles L.: The Cost of the Cranberry Sauce, The Survey,
Dec. 2, 1911.
Darlington, Thomas: Medico-Economic Aspect of the
Immigration Problem, North American Review, 183:1262, 1906.
Holcombe, A. N.: Minimum Wage Boards, The Survey, April 1,
1911.
Kellogg, Paul U.: An Immigrant Labor Tariff, The Survey, Jan. 7,
1911; The above criticised, The Survey, Feb. 4, 1911.
Lauck, W. Jett: Industrial Communities, The Survey, Jan. 1, 1911.
Lovejoy, Owen R.: Cost of the Cranberry Sauce, The Survey, Jan.
1, 1911.
Political Science Quarterly: Levasseur’s American Workman,
13:321, 1898.
Rhodes, J. F.: The Molly Maguires in the Anthracite Region of
Pennsylvania, American Historical Review, 15:547, 1910.
Ripley, William Z.: Race Factors in Labor Unions, Atlantic
Monthly, 93:299, 1904.
Roberts, Peter: The Foreigner and His Savings, Charities, 21:757,
1909.
Speare, Charles F.: What America Pays Europe for Immigrant
Labor, North American Review, 187:106, 1908.
POLITICAL RELATIONS
Books
Books
Books
Books