Being About or Being Stuck Within?
I was not a big fan of chapter 2. In part, this was because I felt like the detour through the details of various theories of vagueness was a distraction. For his overall purposes, Williamson certainly could have left the details of three-valued logic and fuzzy logic and all that to one side. But also, I'm not sure he really addressed the worries of those who think that the only things we study in philosophy are the structures of thought and/or language.
I think he did a good job of showing that some philosophical questions are not either explicitly or implicitly about language and thought, in any natural sense of the word 'about'. But I suspect that people who think all philosophy is in some sense conceptual philosophy don't need to construe their thesis using the word 'about'. Rather, couldn't they say that although there are some questions that aren't even implicitly about language and/or thought, nevertheless the only things we learn from asking and answering those questions are things about language and/or thought? In other words, even if we grant that some philosophical questions aren't even implicitly about language and/or thought, can't we still coherently worry about always being "stuck within" the realm of language and/or thought? I have some friends here at Riverside who seem to take this sort of line, at least.
So, I felt a little bit like Williamson wasn't taking the opposition as seriously as he ought to have been.
I think he did a good job of showing that some philosophical questions are not either explicitly or implicitly about language and thought, in any natural sense of the word 'about'. But I suspect that people who think all philosophy is in some sense conceptual philosophy don't need to construe their thesis using the word 'about'. Rather, couldn't they say that although there are some questions that aren't even implicitly about language and/or thought, nevertheless the only things we learn from asking and answering those questions are things about language and/or thought? In other words, even if we grant that some philosophical questions aren't even implicitly about language and/or thought, can't we still coherently worry about always being "stuck within" the realm of language and/or thought? I have some friends here at Riverside who seem to take this sort of line, at least.
So, I felt a little bit like Williamson wasn't taking the opposition as seriously as he ought to have been.
posted by Neal Tognazzini at 8:06 PM
1 Comments:
Hi Neal,
I have an answer to this question:
Couldn't they say that although there are some questions that aren't even implicitly about language and/or thought, nevertheless the only things we learn from asking and answering those questions are things about language and/or thought?
I think the answer to this question is no. I guess I think Williamson is right that the original question ("was Mars always either dry or not dry?") is a philosophical question. Moreover, I think that by answering the original question, we can come to know something about Mars. For example, if we answer the original question in the affirmative (as Williamson does) then we learn that Mars is such that it was always either dry or not dry. This, I take it, is not about language or thought.
Moreover, if we know that Mars was once clearly wet and is now clearly dry, then we can learn even more about Mars by answering the original question. Again, if we answer the original question in the affirmative, then we can know that at some time mars was not dry and then immediately afterward it became dry. Again, I think this is something we learn about Mars (at least partly) by answering a philosophical question.
Maybe there is a better way of construing the thesis suggested by your question that will avoid these kinds of problems.
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