From Metaphysics to Ethics

Abstract

Conceptual analysis is currently out of favour, especially in North America. This is partly through misunderstanding of its nature. Properly understood, conceptual analysis is not a mysterious activity discredited by Quine that seeks after the a priori in some hard‐to‐understand sense. It is, rather, something familiar to everyone, philosophers and non‐philosophers alike—or so I argue. Another reason for its unpopularity is a failure to appreciate the need for conceptual analysis. The cost of repudiating it has not been sufficiently appreciated; without it, we cannot address a whole raft of important questions. I have always been suspicious of excessively abstract theorizing in philosophy. I think that an important test of metaphilosophical claims is whether they make good sense in the context of particular problems. The discussion in the book is, accordingly, anchored in particular philosophical debates. The basic framework is developed in the first three chapters via a consideration of the role of conceptual analysis in the debate over the doctrine in metaphysics known as physicalism, with digressions on free will, meaning, personal identity, motion, and change, and then applied in the last three chapters to current debates over colour and ethics.

Counterfactual attitudes and multi-centered worlds

“…19 Advocates of two-dimensionalism of the sort I have in mind include Chalmers (1996Chalmers ( , 2002 and Jackson (1998), though the view I outline in the text may not correspond exactly to the views of either of these authors. Stalnaker (1978Stalnaker ( , 1988) offers a different version of two-dimensionalism, which we might have considered instead.…”

Aristotle on Perception and Universals: An Extensional Reading

“…This, however, is owed to his endorsement of possible worlds as concreta. Many shy away from this and define properties as intensionally defined extensions (see Jackson (1998) and Chalmers (2006)). There is a lack of concrete instances when you are not a modal realist.…”

Must Naturalism Lead to a Deflationary Meta-Ontology?

“…Price 1997, 136).) Describing the functions of discourse about the different M-worlds, and how these functions differ from those of scientific 2 See Jackson (1998) for an influential statement of the idea that one of the main tasks of "serious metaphysics" is to solve placement problems and an equally influential account of how to go about solving them, which has come to be called the "Canberra Plan." 3 Many of these papers are collected in .…”