Abstract:Philosophers often aim to demonstrate that the things we ordinarily think and say can be reconciled with our considered beliefs about the world. To this end, many philosophers try to paraphrase ordinary language claims by finding equivalent sentences that are less misleading. For instance, though we know that there is no British family that is the average one, we want to say that the average British family has 1.8 children, and we might do that by paraphrasing this claim as: there are nearly twice as many Brit… Show more
“…Maybe I'm being too quick. The relevant paraphrases are obviously meant to be reconciliatory rather than revisionary with respect to commonsense (von Solodkoff, 2014, pp. 573–757).…”
The standard event‐causal theory of action says that an intentional action is caused in the right way by the right mental states. This view requires reductionism about agency. The causal role of the agent must be nothing over and above the causal contribution of the relevant mental event‐causal processes. But commonsense finds this reductive solution to the “agent‐mind problem”, the problem of explaining the relationship between agents and the mind, incredible. Where did the agent go? This paper suggests that this challenge against event‐causal reductionism is importantly related to debates about fundamentality. It also suggests that extant event‐causal answers to the agent‐mind problem, ones that suggest that part of an agent's mind can stand proxy for the agent herself, fail against the challenge. It sketches an alternative reductive view that appeals to entity grounding. This view resolves the commonsense challenge and promises to be theoretically fruitful with respect to other longstanding problems with the event‐casual view. The paper concludes with a burden‐shifting argument against emergentist agent‐causal theories and non‐reductive event‐causal theories of agency.
“…Maybe I'm being too quick. The relevant paraphrases are obviously meant to be reconciliatory rather than revisionary with respect to commonsense (von Solodkoff, 2014, pp. 573–757).…”
The standard event‐causal theory of action says that an intentional action is caused in the right way by the right mental states. This view requires reductionism about agency. The causal role of the agent must be nothing over and above the causal contribution of the relevant mental event‐causal processes. But commonsense finds this reductive solution to the “agent‐mind problem”, the problem of explaining the relationship between agents and the mind, incredible. Where did the agent go? This paper suggests that this challenge against event‐causal reductionism is importantly related to debates about fundamentality. It also suggests that extant event‐causal answers to the agent‐mind problem, ones that suggest that part of an agent's mind can stand proxy for the agent herself, fail against the challenge. It sketches an alternative reductive view that appeals to entity grounding. This view resolves the commonsense challenge and promises to be theoretically fruitful with respect to other longstanding problems with the event‐casual view. The paper concludes with a burden‐shifting argument against emergentist agent‐causal theories and non‐reductive event‐causal theories of agency.
“…The first is aiming to avoid absurd questions. A representative statement is given by von Solodkoff (2014: 570), who begins her survey article on the paraphrase method as follows:According to recent statistics, the average British family has 1.8 children and owns 0.9 cars. But who is this average family that has eight tenths of a second child and nearly owns a whole car?…”
Section: Paraphrase and ‘Categorial Commitment’mentioning
The method of paraphrasing away apparent ontological commitments is a familiar tool for trimming one's ontology. Even so, I argue that aiming to avoid commitment via paraphrase is unjustified. The reason is the standard motivations for paraphrase rest on implicit yet faulty principles regarding ontological categories and categorization‐ or so I argue. These results also provide indirect support for a permissivist approach to ontology.
“…Warto jednak podkreślić, że jest to również metoda o charakterze rewizyjnym, przy użyciu której możemy dążyć do uproszczenia naszych schematów pojęciowych. Z tej racji parafrazę stosuje się również jako metodę, za pomocą której eliminuje się niepożądane zobowiązania ontologiczne (Solodkoff 2014;Keller 2015). A zatem parafraza nie służy wyłącznie do porządkowania języka nauki oraz do precyzyjnego ujawniania założeń ontologicznych teorii naukowych.…”
Section: Parafraza a Upraszczanie Schematów Pojęciowych Naukiunclassified
Zdaniem Quine'a, jednym z celów filozofii jest klaryfikacja i uproszczenie aparatury pojęciowej, w której formułowana jest wiedza naukowa (Quine 1990(Quine /2004. Według niego najbardziej odpowiednimi do tego narzędziami filozoficznymi są eksplikacja i parafraza 1 , a nie np. analiza pojęciowa. Przyjęcie przez niego wspomnianych metod mogło stanowić rezultat krytyki przedstawionej w artykule Dwa dogmaty empiryzmu (Quine 1951(Quine /2000. W tym artykule dokonał on rewizji dwóch głównych tez charakterystycznych dla nurtu neopozytywizmu 2 : (T 1 ) istnieje wyraźny podział na zdania analityczne i zdania syntetyczne, oraz (T 2 ) można dokonać redukcji wszystkich zdań syntetycznych do zdań obserwacyjnych. Rezultatem rewizji (T 1 ) i (T 2 ) było odrzucenie niejasnych filozoficznie dla Quine'a pojęć, takich jak analityczność, synonimiczność i znaczenie, oraz przyjęcie holizmu konfirmacyjnego.
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