Metaphysical Indeterminacy

这个项目是对形而上学的不确定性的研究。我们在任何地方都会遇到不确定性现象：从抽象的谜题到医生、政治家和公众争论的关键伦理问题。例如，胎儿什么时候变成人？我们能精确到一天、一分钟或一秒吗？在这样一个细节层面上讨论这个问题，充其量看起来是鲁莽的。相反，似乎根本没有“事实的问题”，当过渡发生。然而，如果这些问题没有确定的答案--如果它们是不确定的--我们就必须考虑更广泛的含义。哲学家们广泛讨论了不确定性，但占主导地位的思想是，它必须有两个不同的来源之一：我们对隐藏的事实的无知或我们如何使用语言的不精确。然而，这两种模型都不适合胎儿的情况。很难相信这里的不确定性来自无知--即使知道关于胚胎发育的一切也不能解决这个难题。同样，这个案例似乎也不同于那些在专业文献中占主导地位的不确定性的例子--例如，一个人可以有多少根头发才算“秃头”。这样的例子表明，我们缺乏必要的语言约定--我们只是还没有决定我们的术语“秃头”的确切规格。但似乎仅仅是语言上的惯例不应该承担像人格这样具有道德意义的问题的重量。因此，令人困惑的是，我们可以知道关于这些情况的一切，并确定我们所涉及的术语的确切含义，但仍然发现不确定性。我们认为，最好的诊断是，这里的不确定性是由于世界是什么样的，而不是在我们的知识或世界的代表性的限制。也就是说，这种不确定性是形而上学的，而这种形而上学的不确定性并非人格所独有。例如，我们可能认为未来是不确定的--从现在起100年后会发生什么是不存在的事实。同样的坚持：它可能不确定我的车是否是我在更换了这么多零件后从商店买的那辆车。最近的科学甚至表明，不确定性是基础物理学的核心。然而，形而上学的不确定性被不适当地忽视了，因此，这一主题的辩论被扭曲了，因为显然需要将所有不确定性的情况，无论直觉上多么不适合，以基于直觉或语言的解释。因此，我们的主要目标是发展一个明确的理论形而上学的不确定性，特别是一个不强迫哲学家放弃关键的逻辑或语义原则。项目的第一阶段要问：说不确定性是形而上学的，这意味着什么？我们将通过对形而上学的不确定性的详细描述，从形而上学的其他领域（例如时间和可能性）获得关于辩论的新观点，来挑战对这一概念的普遍怀疑。我们将把我们的理论与它的竞争对手进行比较，特别是与那些认为不确定性必然是由于我们自己的思想和实践的立场进行比较，我们将发展一个详细的形式理论来模拟这些思想。我们先前关于不确定性与可能性、时间和条件性的形式理论的关系的工作，显示出创建一个理论的巨大希望，关键是，它与经典逻辑兼容。最后阶段将这些调查应用于激发项目的案例。调查人员将分别考察形而上学不确定性的应用领域：生命之谜的开始和结束（威廉姆斯）;未来的“不安定”（巴恩斯）;和形而上学的解释（卡梅隆）。这些理论反思与关键的道德问题有着直接的关联--例如，帮助解释了当我们说胎儿何时成为一个人“不存在事实”时，这意味着什么。

This project is an investigation of metaphysical indeterminacy. We encounter the phenomenon of indeterminacy everywhere: from abstract puzzles to crucial ethical questions debated by doctors, politicians, and the public. When, for example, does a foetus become a person? Could we ever pinpoint the exact instant to the day, minute or second? Engaging the question at such a level of detail looks foolhardy at best. Instead, it seems that there is simply 'no fact of the matter' as to when the transition occurs. Yet if there is no determinate answer to such questions--if they are indeterminate--we must consider the broader implications.Indeterminacy is widely discussed by philosophers, but the dominant thought is that it must have one of two distinct sources: our ignorance of hidden facts or imprecision in how we use our words. Yet neither model fits the foetus case well. It is hard to believe that the indeterminacy here arises from ignorance--even knowing everything there was to know about embryonic development wouldn't solve the puzzle. Likewise, the case seems different from examples of indeterminacy that dominate the specialist literature-for example, how many hairs a man can have and count as 'bald'. Such cases show that we lack the required conventions of language--we just haven't decided the exact specifications of our term 'bald'. But it seems that mere linguistic conventions should not bear the weight of such morally significant matters as personhood. The puzzle, then, is that we could know everything about these cases, and decide exactly what we mean by the terms involved, yet still find indeterminacy. We argue that best diagnosis of this is that the indeterminacy here is due to what the world is like, not limitations in our knowledge or representation of the world. That is, the indeterminacy is metaphysical.And such metaphysical indeterminacy is not unique to personhood. We might think the future, for example, is indeterminate--there is no fact of the matter about what will happen 100 years from now. Similarly persistence: it may indeterminate whether my car is the same one that I bought from the shop after having so many parts replaced. Recent science even suggests that indeterminacy lies at the heart of fundamental physics. Metaphysical indeterminacy, however, has been unduly ignored--and as a result debates in the subject have been distorted by the apparent need to accommodate all cases of indeterminacy, no matter how intuitively unsuitable, to ignorance-based or linguistic accounts. Thus our primary goal is to develop a clear theory of metaphysical indeterminacy, specifically one which does not force philosophers to give up key logical or semantic principles. The first stage of the project asks: What does it mean to say that indeterminacy is metaphysical? We will challenge the widespread scepticism of the very notion by providing a detailed account of metaphysical indeterminacy, deriving fresh perspectives on the debate from other areas of metaphysics (e.g. time and possibility). We will compare our theory to its rivals, especially to positions which maintain that indeterminacy must be due to our own thoughts and practices.We will develop a detailed formal theory to model these ideas. Our previous work on indeterminacy's relationship to formal theories of possibility and time, and conditionality, shows great promise for creating a theory that, crucially, is compatible with classical logic.The final stage applies these investigations to cases which motivate the project. The investigators will each examine areas for the application of metaphysical indeterminacy: beginning and end of life puzzles (Williams); the 'unsettledness' of the future (Barnes); and metaphysical explanation (Cameron). These theoretical reflections have direct relevance to key moral problems - helping explain, for example, what it means when we say there is 'no fact of the matter' as to when a foetus becomes a person.