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Empirical metaphysics: the role of intuitions about possible cases in philosophy

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Abstract

Frank Jackson has argued that only if we have a priori knowledge of the extension-fixers for many of our terms can we vindicate the methodological practice of relying on intuitions to decide between philosophical theories. While there has been much discussion of Jackson’s claim that we have such knowledge, there has been comparatively little discussion of this most powerful argument for that claim. Here I defend an alternative explanation of our intuitions about possible cases, one that does not rely on a priori extension-fixers. This alternative explanation provides a vindication of our reliance on intuitions, while blocking Jackson’s abductive argument for a priori semantic knowledge. In brief, I argue that we should regard our armchair intuitions as providing an important, a priori source of evidence for hypotheses about the contents of our implicit referential policies with regard to our terms. But all such hypotheses have a potential falsifier that is only discoverable empirically. In other words, gold-standard evidence for such hypotheses is always empirical.

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Notes

  1. Thanks to John Gibbons for discussion here.

  2. Where appropriate, “E = ?” is replaced by a biconditional formula, e.g. where “E” is replaced by a predicate.

  3. See Jackson (1998a, pp. 28–37 and 47–48).

  4. See, for example, his (1998a, pp. 28–55, and 1998b).

  5. Jackson (1998a, pp. 28–29).

  6. See Thomson (1985, p. 84).

  7. Frankfurt (1969).

  8. Salmon (1993).

  9. Jackson’s claims here are arguably oversimplified. One might dispute his claim that, in the discussions of particular intuitions just mentioned, anything quite as specific as the evaluation of a Jackson-style intuition-pumper is in play. This is unfortunate, I think, not for Jackson’s argument, but for the reliance on intuitions in those discussions. Care requires that we distinguish three different sorts of intuitions, on the one hand, and three different sorts of account that such intuitions might be thought to support or undermine, on the other.

    Consider three different sorts of account. The form of an account of the kind at issue in many philosophical discussions is ‘Fs are Gs’. Accounts of this very generic kind differ as to whether they are (1) contingent, a posteriori universal generalizations, (2) a priori, or (3) metaphysically necessary. Post-Naming and Necessity, most philosophers regard a priority and metaphysical necessity as capable of coming apart. Given this, we should expect an in principle difference in the kinds of scenario or possibility that undermine each of these accounts. Unfortunately, the philosophical practice of appealing to intuitions became entrenched long before Kripke’s book and has altered little since.

    So, to be more clear: We need actual counter-cases to undermine universal generalizations and we need intuitions about what is epistemically possible (the kind that Jackson’s intuition-pumpers are to help us discover) to undermine putative a priori truths. And, of course, we need intuitions about what is possible counterfactually to undermine purported metaphysical necessities.

    So, which are at issue in the sample philosophical disputes I’ve mentioned? The papers I’ve cited don’t mark the distinctions that I have just marked. Nonetheless, I think there are two sources of evidence for the view that something like epistemic possibility is in play in the intuitions their authors appeal to. First, all of the scenarios these authors imagine are described by them in the present tense, rather than the counterfactual-indicating subjunctive. (E.g. Salmon does not say ‘suppose that there had been a spotlight mounted in the center of a circular room…’. Rather, he says “suppose that we have a very large circular building…with a spotlight mounted at its centre” (Salmon 1993, p. 153. See also Gettier 1963, p. 122.)

    Second, these authors often describe the theories they aim to undermine as purported analyses or a priori truths. (See for example Frankfurt 1969, p. 829.)

    Rather than quoting extensive passages from Gettier, Frankfurt, Salmon, and Thompson, I invite the reader to check these characterizations for herself.

  10. For a nice critical discussion of this practice, see Weatherson (2003).

  11. Foes of a priori extension-fixing components of content include Byrne and Pryor (2006), Bigelow and Schroeter (forthcoming), Block and Stalnaker (1999), Soames (2005), Stalnaker (2003) and Yablo (2000).

  12. It’s neutral, for example, between Kripke’s, Putnam’s, Lewis’s, and Stalnaker’s positions as well as Jackson’s and Chalmers’.

  13. See their (2001).

  14. These are truths that about what the extension of “E” is in Wn.

  15. Jackson’s position is that our terms have a priori knowable components of content, while Chalmers’s position is that our term-tokens do. For ease of exposition, I put the argument in Jackson’s terms. But the argument, put in terms of S’s tokenings of “E”, fits Chalmers’s position as well.

  16. See Jackson (1998) and Chalmers (2004).

  17. See footnote 3.

  18. Chalmers (2004, pp. 176–184). See also Jackson (1998, p. 36): “The business of extracting the cases that count as Ks [where Ks are the target of some investigation] from a person’s responses to possible cases is an exercise in hypothetico-deduction. We are seeking the hypothesis that best makes sense of their responses taking into account all the evidence.”

  19. See footnote 3.

  20. Chalmers (2004, p. 177). “On the epistemic understanding, to consider a world as actual is to consider the hypothesis that W is one’s own world.” See also, Jackson (1998, p. 51): ‘What we can know independently of knowing what the actual world is like can properly be called a priori.”

  21. In this case, to evaluate the consequent on the supposition that the antecedent is true requires that that antecedent include information about where S is located in Wn.

  22. See, for example, Jackson (1998a, 1998b, 2001) and Chalmers (2002b, 2004).

  23. See, for example, Chalmers’ (2006, p. 91) and his footnote 13 reply to an objection by posed by Byrne and Pryor (2006).

  24. If I understand their view correctly, according to Henderson and Horgan, that armchair reflection can be mistaken suffices to introduce an empirical element. My understanding is that their reasoning is as follows: Appreciation of the conditions under which armchair judgments fail to reflect semantic or conceptual competence requires an understanding of human psychology. Our understanding of human psychology is empirical. Therefore, the armchair reasoning by which we come to appreciate the contents of our concepts or terms is partly empirical. (They call truths we may discover according to this process “low-grade a priori”.) (See their 2001.)

  25. Stalnaker seems to accept something like this natural understanding of supposition. See his (1987, pp. 79–81).

  26. This is a quick statement of my claim. I’ll put the point a bit more carefully below, isolating which respects are relevant to successful mimicry. Briefly, those respects are the ones that have to do with our reasoning about what to think, not our reasoning about what to do.

  27. “…is disgusting”, “…is fun”, and “…is cute” are some examples.

  28. A slightly more technical way of putting the point is: Let R be S’s actual “E”-descriptive reaction to the belief that she’s in Wn. Whatever R is, we can imagine a world in which her “E”-descriptive reaction is not R. This makes R an empirical feature of the actual world. But then anyone’s knowledge that the actual world possesses R is a posteriori in the Jackson/Chalmers sense. This is true for S herself. So S’s knowledge of what her “E”-descriptive reaction R is is a posteriori.

  29. Wilson (2006).

  30. One might think here that this discussion is grist for the Jackson/Chalmers mill. After all, doesn’t it show that I am able to know a priori what it takes for something to be within the extension of my term, e.g. “water”? I seem to know this after all: I know that in any world Wn supposed to be actual, what I am disposed to call “water” in Wn fixes the extension of “water” in Wn. (Thanks to David Braddon-Mitchell for pressing this point in conversation.) But, (1) this reply isn’t available to either Jackson or Chalmers neither of whom wants our extension-fixers, such as our descriptive dispositions, to shift across worlds considered as actual since this would make metalinguistic facts about those worlds relevant to their evaluation. (Chalmers 2006). Moreover, (2) making room for interesting a priori truths requires that such metalinguistic facts are irrelevant to their evaluation. If they were relevant, every expression would have a trivial and different a priori known component of content, since it would be true for every expression “E” that, for every world Wn, what “E” refers in Wn to has the feature of being what I call “E” in Wn. But then, for any two terms “E” and “T” we take, there will be some worlds we may consider—either suppose or believe—to be actual such that I will call different things “E” and “T” in those worlds. That is why Jackson and Chalmers must insist that metalinguistic facts that obtain in a world of evaluation are irrelevant to their evaluation. Allowing their relevance requires giving up on interesting, a priori truths.

  31. Thanks to Albert Casullo for helpful discussion here.

  32. Thanks to Jonathan Schaffer for this example.

  33. Thanks to David Braddon-Mitchell for posing this objection in conversation.

  34. Thanks to Jill North, Joshua Schecter, and Jessica Wilson for each raising something like this objection in discussion. Witmer [forthcoming] also claims that some form of irrationality must be in play in these kinds of case. For the reasons given in reply 2, I think this cannot be correct.

  35. Stalnaker (2003, p. 196).

  36. Jackson himself in places favors this understanding. See his (1998a, p. 48). For another fan of a priori extension-fixers who also seems to favor this understanding, see Braddon-Mitchell (2004, p. 137).

  37. I suppose that one might argue that “I exist” is a priori known by me. However, Chalmers (2004) regards such truths as empirical.

  38. This will be true on Stalnaker’s way of representing belief states which I am adopting for present purposes. See his (1987, p. 69).

  39. Edgington makes a somewhat similar point in her [2006] p. 9–10. There she notes that the suppositional theory of indicative conditionals requires that the probability of the antecedent not be zero, that is, an evaluator must regard the antecedent as an epistemic possibility.

  40. See Jackson (1998a).

  41. See, for example, Chalmers and Jackson (2001) and Jackson (1998a).

  42. For a more detailed defense of the claim that analyses are not necessary for reductions to be vindicated by what is otherwise the Jackson/Chalmers method, see Dowell (2008).

  43. See, for example, Dowell (2006) and Wilson (2006).

  44. For a more detailed defense of the claim that conceptual analysis isn’t needed to defend the reductions at issue in many metaphysical disputes, see Dowell (2008).

  45. See Jackson and Chalmers (2001).

  46. See, for example, Byrne and Pryor (2006), Soames (2005), and Yablo (2005).

  47. See, for example, Jackson and Chalmers (2001), Jackson (1998), Block and Stalnaker (1999), McLaughlin (2005).

  48. Jackson (1998a).

  49. Chalmers (2002a).

  50. Dowell (2008).

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Acknowledgements

Many thanks to David Braddon-Mitchell, Al Casullo, Sean Foran, Gene Witmer, Jonathan Schaffer, Joshua Schecter, David Sobel, Ryan Wasserman, and Jessica Wilson for helpful discussions of the issues raised in this paper. Thanks also to the participants in the discussion of earlier versions of this paper at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and at the BSPC 2007.

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    J. L. Dowell

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Dowell, J.L. Empirical metaphysics: the role of intuitions about possible cases in philosophy. Philos Stud 140, 19–46 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-008-9224-2

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