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The Age of Metaphysical Revolution: David Lewis and His Place in the History of Analytic Philosophy

形而上学革命时代：大卫·刘易斯及其在分析哲学史上的地位

基本信息

批准号：
AH/N004000/1
负责人：
Helen Beebee
金额：
$ 101.94万
依托单位：
University of Manchester
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Research Grant
财政年份：
2016
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2016 至无数据
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FN004000%2F1
关键词：
Age Metaphysical Revolution David Lewis

项目摘要

David Lewis (1941-2001) was a metaphysical revolutionary, who played a transformative role in the history of analytic philosophy. In 1986 he published his game-changing On the Plurality of Worlds. He argued that our universe or world is only one of many universes or worlds. Unfortunately we can't travel to them; they are, so to speak, 'island universes', disconnected from one another. But there are infinitely many universes or worlds, and everything that can happen does happen somewhere in one of them. Famously Lewis declared that there are talking donkeys in some of these worlds and unicorns in others. According to Lewis, we, all of us, every day in our ordinary lives, are talking about creatures from other worlds. When you're contemplating the possibility that you might have had different friends, or family, or a different career, you are thinking about someone else in one of those island universes, a real-life doppelgänger, someone like you except for the fact that they have different friends, a different family or a different career.Lewis raised plenty of eyebrows saying this; famously many philosophers just stared back incredulously. But analytic philosophy wasn't the same afterwards. He had opened the door to metaphysical speculation in the grand manner long out of fashion; visions of reality no less sweeping than his own soon became the order of the day. How did Lewis bring about this paradigm shift even though nobody agreed with him? Why does the Age of Metaphysical Revolution he inaugurated with these extraordinary claims continue today, and, for all expectations, tomorrow? The short answer is that the lines of history ran through Lewis. Lewis had rediscovered metaphysics between science and commonsense. His own intellectual journey had taken him from Oxford, where he learnt respect for commonsense and ordinary language, tutored by Iris Murdoch and lectured by Strawson, to Harvard, where he imbibed Quine's systematic, science-driven philosophy. Later Lewis was a frequent visitor to Australia where Smart's and Armstrong's forays into materialistic metaphysics had prepared the way for him. Lewis's mature philosophy was extraordinary for being a synthesis of all these influences. He conceived the goal of philosophy to be achieving a balance between science and commonsense. Lewis held metaphysics to be respectable insofar as metaphysics results from the endeavour to capture commonsense and science together in one encompassing theoretical net. He inspired a generation of philosophers to do metaphysics because even though most didn't believe in talking donkeys (so they didn't think he had got the balance right), Lewis wasn't authoritarian. He left everyone at liberty to do their own metaphysics: Lewis left each of us to judge when we have achieved a balance between these forces, a matter for every philosopher to square with her own intellectual conscience.Lewis was famous not only for his published writings but also his dynamic engagement with philosophers worldwide, evinced by his correspondence with over a thousand of them during his career. His widow, Stephanie Lewis, has given us access to his philosophical correspondence and other posthumous papers. By making this remarkable historical resource available for the first time, she has provided us with a unique opportunity to retrace her husband's intellectual journey from neophyte to metaphysical visionary. A major task of our project will be to select from the thousands of pages of letters between Lewis and his interlocutors the most revealing ones, and edit this material for publication, making it available to future generations of philosophers and historians of philosophy. But understanding what makes this or that exchange revealing is bound up with comprehending the genesis of our current metaphysical age. So our tandem aim will be to write the first ever history of late 20th-century analytic philosophy that explains our Age of Metaphysical Revolution.

大卫刘易斯（1941-2001）是一位形而上学革命家，在分析哲学史上起着变革性的作用。1986年，他出版了《论世界的多元性》（On the Plurality of Worlds）。他认为我们的宇宙或世界只是众多宇宙或世界之一。不幸的是，我们无法前往它们;可以说，它们是“岛屿大学”，彼此脱节。但宇宙或世界有无限多个，所有可能发生的事情确实都发生在其中一个宇宙或世界的某个地方。著名的刘易斯宣称，在这些世界中的一些世界中有会说话的驴，在另一些世界中有独角兽。根据刘易斯的说法，我们，我们所有人，在日常生活中的每一天，都在谈论来自其他世界的生物。当你在思考你可能有不同的朋友、家庭或不同的职业时，你在想的是那些岛屿宇宙中的另一个人，一个现实生活中的二重身，一个和你一样的人，除了他们有不同的朋友、不同的家庭或不同的职业。刘易斯说这话时引起了很多人的注意;众所周知，许多哲学家只是怀疑地盯着你。但后来的分析哲学就不一样了。他以一种早已过时的宏大方式打开了形而上学思考的大门;对现实的想象不亚于他自己的想象，很快就成了当时的秩序。刘易斯是如何实现这种范式转变的，尽管没有人同意他的观点？为什么他用这些非凡的主张开创的形而上学革命时代今天还在继续，而且，对于所有人的期望，明天也在继续？简短的回答是，历史的主线贯穿了刘易斯。刘易斯在科学与常识之间重新发现了形而上学。他自己的知识之旅把他从牛津带到了哈佛，在那里他学会了尊重常识和普通语言，在那里他接受了艾丽丝·默多克的辅导和斯特劳森的演讲，在那里他吸收了奎因系统的、科学驱动的哲学。后来，刘易斯是澳大利亚的常客，斯马特和阿姆斯特朗对唯物主义形而上学的探索为他铺平了道路。刘易斯的成熟哲学是非凡的，因为它综合了所有这些影响。他认为哲学的目标是在科学和常识之间取得平衡。刘易斯认为形而上学是值得尊敬的，因为形而上学是努力将常识和科学一起捕获在一个包容的理论网络中的结果。他激励了一代哲学家去研究形而上学，因为尽管大多数人不相信会说话的驴子（所以他们认为他没有正确地平衡），刘易斯并不是独裁者。他让每个人都自由地去做他们自己的形而上学：刘易斯让我们每个人去判断我们什么时候在这些力量之间取得了平衡，这是每个哲学家都要与自己的理智良心保持一致的事情。刘易斯不仅以他出版的著作而闻名，而且以他与世界各地哲学家的活跃接触而闻名，他在职业生涯中与一千多位哲学家的通信就证明了这一点。他的遗孀，斯蒂芬妮刘易斯，给了我们访问他的哲学通信和其他死后的文件。通过首次提供这一非凡的历史资源，她为我们提供了一个独特的机会，追溯她丈夫从新手到形而上学幻想家的知识之旅。我们项目的一项主要任务是从刘易斯和他的对话者之间的数千页信件中挑选出最具启发性的信件，并编辑这些材料出版，供未来的哲学家和哲学史学家使用。但是，理解是什么使这种或那种交换具有启示性，与理解我们当前形而上学时代的起源息息相关。因此，我们的共同目标将是撰写第一部20世纪晚期分析哲学史，解释我们的形而上学革命时代。