Higher-order Metaphysics

人类状况的一个显著特征是，我们发现自己被一个很大程度上独立于我们的经验、欲望和行为的世界所包围，并嵌入其中。试图理解这个外部世界是人类探索的核心。这个外在实在的本质是什么？它包含什么样的实体？科学提供了一些答案，例如生物学家研究有机体；心理学家研究心灵；天文学家研究天体；量子物理学家研究非常小的东西。然而，每一门科学本质上都是片面的，只涉及现实的某些方面。相比之下，形而上学以最一般和最包罗万象的术语研究现实。它研究的是任何一门科学都无法解决的问题。是否存在一个完整的一般分类，每个科学的实体都在其中被发现？不同的科学如何结合成对单一现实的统一描述？也许最根本的问题是，生命的存在到底是什么？形而上学经历了动荡的20世纪。在实证主义者的影响下，它多年来被贬为毫无意义的伪科学。然而，在奎因、克里普克、刘易斯等人的影响下，它在20世纪的最后几十年成为一门蓬勃发展的学科。今天，形而上学再次成为哲学的核心。奎因是形而上学复兴的关键人物，他继承了奎因的两个学说，深刻地塑造了当代形而上学。第一个奎因主义是关于存在的：关于什么存在的问题应该用量词来表述，比如“某物”和“有”这样的词。第二个奎因主义涉及可接受的量化形式。普通英语量词是逻辑学家所说的一阶量词。如果你被告知Tibbles会发出呼噜声，一阶量词允许你推断出某些东西会发出呼噜声。他们不允许你推断Tibbles“某事”-这只是没有意义的英语。然而，逻辑系统已经发展到允许这种推断。这些系统中的量词被称为高阶量词。第二个奎因主义认为这些高阶量词是没有意义的。这些学说共同构成了一个背景框架，许多当代形而上学在其中发生。这个框架将关于存在的形而上学问题转化为用一阶量词表述的问题。称之为一阶形而上学。在语言和逻辑哲学中，一种新兴的共识反对第二种奎因主义。然而，这个高度技术性和抽象的领域似乎与更熟悉的哲学问题相分离。因此，其后果尚未得到充分认识。这个奖学金旨在通过发展和应用一个新的高阶形而上学框架来解决这个问题。高阶形而上学从一系列不同的高阶量词开始。第一个奎因主义将它们转化为一系列不同的存在概念。它取代了我们通常的现实概念，即。现存的——一个新的碎片化的，不同的碎片对应不同的高阶量词。本文将首先探讨这种观点的基础，以及这种分裂究竟涉及到什么，然后将其应用于一些传统的形而上学辩论。例如，在真理的形而上学中，使用高阶量词对真理的描述可以追溯到拉姆齐——分析哲学传统的奠基人——和普赖尔。从高阶形而上学的角度来看，拉姆齐-普赖尔的真理论结合了当代两种主要真理观的核心思想：对应论和通缩论。因此，高阶形而上学为关于这两种观点的争论提供了一种和解的新解决方案：它揭示了关于真理形而上学的两种主要观点并不真正处于竞争之中

A striking feature of the human condition is that we find ourselves surrounded by, and embedded within, a world largely independent of our experiences, desires, and behaviour. Attempts to understand this external world lie at the heart of human inquiry. What is the nature of this external reality, and what kinds of entity does it contain?The sciences supply some answers, e.g. biologists study organisms; psychologists study the mind; astronomers study celestial bodies; quantum physicists study the very small. Yet each science is essentially partial, concerned with only some aspects of reality. Metaphysics, by contrast, studies reality in maximally general and encompassing terms. It investigates questions that escape any individual science. Is there a fully general classification of what exists, within which each science's entities are found? How do the different sciences combine into a unified account of a single reality? And, perhaps most fundamentally of all, what is it to exist in the first place?Metaphysics had a turbulent 20th century. Under the influence of the positivists, it was rubbished as meaningless pseudo-science for many years. Under the influence of Quine, Kripke, Lewis, and others, however, it rose to become a thriving discipline in the 20th century's closing decades. Today, metaphysics is once again at the heart of philosophy.Contemporary metaphysics has been deeply shaped by two doctrines inherited from Quine, a key figure in metaphysics' resurgence. The first Quinean doctrine is about existence: questions about what exists should be formulated using quantifiers, i.e. words like "something" and "there is". The second Quinean doctrine concerns the acceptable forms of quantification. Ordinary English quantifiers are what logicians call first-order quantifiers. If you're told that Tibbles purrs, first-order quantifiers allow you to infer that something purrs. They don't allow you to infer that Tibbles "somethings"-that's just not meaningful English. Yet logical systems have been developed that permit that inference. The quantifiers in these systems are called higher-order quantifiers. The second Quinean doctrine says that these higher-order quantifiers are meaningless. These doctrines together constitute a background framework in which much contemporary metaphysics takes place. The framework transforms metaphysical questions about what exists into questions formulated with first-order quantifiers. Call this first-order metaphysics.An emerging consensus in philosophy of language and logic rejects the second Quinean doctrine. However, this highly technical and abstract field can appear isolated from more familiar philosophical concerns. As a result, its consequences have yet to be fully appreciated. This Fellowship aims to address that, by developing and applying a new framework of higher-order metaphysics.Higher-order metaphysics begins with an array of different higher-order quantifiers. The first Quinean doctrine converts them into an array of different notions of existence. That replaces our ordinary conception of reality-i.e. what exists-with a new and fragmented one, different fragments corresponding to different higher-order quantifiers. This Fellowship will first explore the view's foundations, and exactly what this fragmentation involves, then apply it to some traditional metaphysical debates. In the metaphysics of truth, for example, an account of truth that uses higher-order quantifiers dates back to Ramsey-a founding figure of the analytic philosophical tradition-and Prior. When viewed from the perspective of higher-order metaphysics, this Ramsey-Prior theory of truth can be seen to combine the core ideas of the two leading contemporary views of truth: correspondence and deflationism. Higher-order metaphysics thus provides a conciliatory new solution to the debate about these two views: it reveals that the two leading views about the metaphysics of truth are not really in competition