Metaphysics Lecture One

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What is metaphysics?
Philosophy concerned with very general and abstract questions about what the world is like
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What is ontology?
A subdiscipline of metaphysics, concerned with the question 'what exists?'
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Why does Quine say the question is simple?
It can be asked in three words "what is there?" and can be answered in one "everything" and everyone will accept the answer as true
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Why does Quine say the question is complex?
There remains room for disagreement over cases and so the issue has stayed alive
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What would be one way of giving an informative answer?
Providing a list of things that exist
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What are ontologists typically trying to do?
Answer general questions about what exists and rather than asking about individual things they ask about types or categories of things
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What are the candidate categories of things for ontology?
Material objects, events, mathematical objects, minds or souls and properties
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What is Ockham's Razor?
A prominent methodological maxim that can give an account of what exists
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What does Ockham's Razor tell us to do?
To minimise the number of ontological categories
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What is the translation and interpretation of Ockham's Razor?
Entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity, do not claim that there is a certain category of things unless you have good reasons to do so
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What are the two motivations of Ockham's Razor?
Parsimony a theoretical virtue in its own right and parsimony seen as a special case of simplicity
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How do we interpret "beyond necessity"?
We should not accept entities of a certain kind without good reason
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What would be a good reason of accepting entities of a certain kind?
The entities give us an overall better explanation of a phenomenon
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What is a weak reading of the principle of Ockham's Razor?
Given two ontological theories we should prefer the one according to which there are fewer ontological categories - other things being equal
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What do we have to be careful of when counting the number of ontological categories?
To only count those that are distinct
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How can we distinguish two ways of refusing to accept a kind K of entities in one's ontology?
Eliminativism and Reductionism
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What is eliminativism?
Denying that there are any entities of kind K
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What is reductionism?
Accepting that there are entities of kind K but taking them to be reducible to entities of some different kinds
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Card 2

Front

What is ontology?

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A subdiscipline of metaphysics, concerned with the question 'what exists?'

Card 3

Front

Why does Quine say the question is simple?

Back

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Card 4

Front

Why does Quine say the question is complex?

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Card 5

Front

What would be one way of giving an informative answer?

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