Metaphysics, Verbal Disputes and the Limits of Charity
Metaphysics, Verbal Disputes and the Limits of Charity
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形而上学、言语纠纷和慈善的限度
DOI：
10.1111/j.1933-1592.2011.00569.x
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发表时间：
2013
影响因子：
1.5
通讯作者：
Brendan Balcerak Jackson
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Brendan Balcerak Jackson
像（4）-（6）这样的案例的直觉非实质性的一个症状是，人们很自然地将关于这些句子是否正确的争论视为“仅仅是口头上的”分歧。想象一下，与一个坚持玻璃杯算作杯子的人发生争执。正如伊莱·赫希（Eli Hirsch）所观察到的，在这场争论中，“除了语言的正确使用之外，没有什么是实质性的”。1在普通英语中，cup这个词只适用于非玻璃的饮用器皿，因此，我们的对话者声称“Glasses are cups”在普通英语中是错误的。但是，很难看到任何更深层次或更实质性的意义，我们是正确的，他是错误的“事实”（除了，也许，关于英语的事实）。相比之下，在一般情况下，对于失业是否会导致通货膨胀的分歧，仅仅是口头上的，根本不可能置之不理;在大多数情况下，直觉上比正确使用“失业”和“通货膨胀”等术语更危险。根据一些哲学家，我们可以称他们为通货紧缩论者，当代形而上学的一些中心争论仅仅是口头上的，就像我们想象中的关于玻璃杯是否算杯子的争论一样。例如，当元哲学家争论一组对象在什么条件下具有部分论的和时，紧缩论者坚持认为，没有什么比正确使用语言更重要的了。无论这场争论中的形而上学家认为他们在做什么，他们的不同立场只不过反映了“对象”、“存在”和“存在”等术语的不同用法。如果这些术语在普通英语中的正确用法存在确定的事实，那么这个或那个参与者提出的部分原理在普通英语中可能是正确的。但这是她的观点是正确的，而其他人的观点是错误的唯一意义。因此，紧缩论者认为这里的真理并不比（4）-（6）那样的情况更具有实质性。这类紧缩论的经典人物是鲁道夫·卡尔纳普，上文给出的对实体/非实体区别的直观描述反映了卡尔纳普的观点。[2]卡尔纳普会把像（4）-（6）这样的句子看作意义公设，或者也许是意义公设的逻辑结果。因此，他们没有表达
One symptom of the intuitive non-substantiveness of cases like (4)-(6) is that it is natural to dismiss disputes about whether such sentences are true as being ‘‘merely verbal’’disagreements. Imagine engaging in a dispute with someone who insists that glasses do count as cups. As Eli Hirsch observes, it is very tempting to suppose that ‘‘nothing is substantively at stake’’in this dispute,‘‘beyond the correct use of language.’’1 In ordinary English the word ‘cup’applies only to non-glass drinking vessels, and so our interlocutor’s claim that ‘Glasses are cups’ is false when understood in ordinary English. But it is hard to see any deeper or more substantive sense in which we are right and he is wrong about ‘‘the facts’’(other than, perhaps, the facts about English). By contrast, in ordinary circumstances it is not at all tempting to dismiss a disagreement over whether or not unemployment causes inflation as merely verbal; in most cases, there is intuitively much more at stake than the correct use of terms like ‘unemployment’and ‘inflation’.According to some philosophers, whom we might call deflationists, some of the central debates in contemporary metaphysics are merely verbal in much the same sense as our imagined dispute about whether glasses count as cups. For example, when metaphysicians debate about the conditions under which a collection of objects has a mereological sum, the deflationist maintains there is nothing more at stake than the correct use of language. Whatever the metaphysicians in this debate might think they are doing, their various positions merely reflect different uses of terms like ‘object’,‘exists’ and ‘there is’. If there is a determinate fact about the correct usage of these terms in ordinary English, then the mereological principle advanced by one or another participant might turn out to be true in ordinary English. But this is the only sense in which her view is right and the views of the others are wrong. The deflationist thus regards the truth here as no more substantive than in cases like (4)-(6). The locus classicus of this sort of deflationism is Rudolf Carnap, and the intuitive characterization of the substantive⁄ non-substantive distinction given above reflects Carnap’s views. 2 Carnap would regard sentences like (4)-(6) as meaning postulates, or perhaps as logical consequences of meaning postulates. As such, they do not express
近代哲学的主要趋势：经验主义的两个教条。
DOI：
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发表时间：
1951
期刊：
影响因子：
--
作者：
W. Quine
通讯作者：
W. Quine
相对论时空中的持久性和位置
DOI：
--
发表时间：
2008
期刊：
影响因子：
--
作者：
Cody Gilmore
通讯作者：
Cody Gilmore
DOI：
--
发表时间：
2006
期刊：
影响因子：
--
作者：
K. Fine
通讯作者：
K. Fine