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Notes
In conversation, I have learned that as Balaguer sees it we can learn almost nothing interesting about the nature of reality by attending to which analyses of our concepts are correct. I, by contrast, operate under the assumption that we are often able to learn something non-trivial about the nature of the world from our concepts and from our coming to correct analyses (or eludications) of them. Admittedly, as I see it, that process is fallible. But it seems to me not unreasonable to assume that one reason we have the concepts we do is that we are, so to speak, related to, or situated in the world. And so the concepts we come to acquire are bound to be shaped by that relation, and their refinement over generations of language users is liable to reflect some considerable amount of collective judgment and wisdom as regards what that relation comes to. Granted, it should not be assumed that these presuppositions about the etiology of our concepts are always reliable; but they should also not be presumptively dismissed.
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Acknowledgments
For helpful comments I would like to thank Derk Pereboom, and especially Mark Balaguer.
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Prepared for a 2011 APA Pacific Division Author-Meets-Critics Session.
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McKenna, M. The metaphysical importance of the compatibility question: comments on Mark Balaguer’s Free Will as an Open Scientific Problem . Philos Stud 169, 39–50 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-012-9897-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-012-9897-4