Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T08:49:30.610Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Philosophy as Total Axiomatics: Serious Metaphysics, Scrutability Bases, and Aesthetic Evaluation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2016

URIAH KRIEGEL
URIAH KRIEGEL*
Affiliation:
JEAN NICOD INSTITUTE, PARIS, [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

What is the aim of philosophy? There may be too many philosophical branches, traditions, practices, and programs to admit of a single overarching aim. Here, I focus on a fairly traditional philosophical project that has recently received increasingly sophisticated articulation, especially by Frank Jackson (1998) and David Chalmers (2012). In Section 1, I present the project and suggest that it is usefully thought of as ‘total axiomatics’: the project of attempting to axiomatize the total theory of the world. In Section 2, I raise a problem for the project that I call the ‘problem of multiple axiomatizations’. I consider some initially alluring but ultimately unpromising approaches to this problem in Section 3. In Section 4, I defend a surprising approach to the problem, according to which competing axiomatizations of the total theory of the world are effectively evaluated for their aesthetic virtues.

Keywords

serious metaphysicsscrutabilitymetaphilosophythe aim of philosophytotal axiomatics
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the American Philosophical Association , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , Summer 2016 , pp. 272 - 290
Copyright
Copyright © American Philosophical Association 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Benovsky, J. (2013) ‘Philosophical Theories, Aesthetic Value, and Theory Choice’. Journal of Value Inquiry, 47, 191–205.Google Scholar
Blanché, Robert. (1955) L'axiomatique. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.Google Scholar
Bourbaki, Nicolas. (1970) Éléments de mathématique. Paris: Hermann.Google Scholar
Bovens, Luc, and Stephan, Hartmann. (2003) Bayesian Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Carnap, R. (1932) ‘The Elimination of Metaphysics through Logical Analysis of Language’. Erkenntnis, 2, 219–41. Reprinted in Sarker, S. (ed.), Logical Empiricism at Its Peak. Translated by A. Pap (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1996), 10–32.Google Scholar
Carnap, R. (1950) ‘Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology’. Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 4, 20–40.Google Scholar
Castaneda, Héctor-Neri. (1980) On Philosophical Method. Bloomington, IN: Nous Publications.Google Scholar
Chalmers, David J. (2009) ‘Ontological Anti-Realism’. In Chalmers, David J., Manley, David, and Wasserman, Ryan (eds.), Metametaphysics (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press), 77–129.Google Scholar
Chalmers, David J. (2012) Constructing the World. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hutcheson, Francis. (2004) An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund. First published 1725.Google Scholar
Jackson, Frank C. (1998) From Metaphysics to Ethics: A Defence of Conceptual Analysis. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Kriegel, U. (2013) ‘The Epistemological Challenge of Revisionary Metaphysics’. Philosophers’ Imprint, 12, 1–30.Google Scholar
Kriegel, U. (2015). ‘Total Axiomatics and Philosophical Practice’. Unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
Levine, J. (1983) ‘Materialism and Qualia: The Explanatory Gap’. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 64, 354–61.Google Scholar
Nietzsche, Friedrich. (1999) The Birth of Tragedy. Trans. Speirs, R.. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. First published 1872.Google Scholar
Pasch, Moritz. (1882) Vorlesungen über neuere Geometrie. Leipzig: Teubner.Google Scholar
Peano, Giuseppe. (1889) Arithmetices principia, nova methodo exposita. Turin: Bocca.Google Scholar
Pieri, M. (1900) ‘Della geometria elementare come sistema ipotetico deduttivo’. Monografia del punto e del moto: Memorie della Reale Accademia delle Scienze di Torino, 49, 173–222.Google Scholar
Plotinus. (1952). The Six Enneads. Translated by McKenna, S. and Page, B. S.. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica Publishing.Google Scholar
Schlimm, D. (2013) ‘Axioms in Mathematical Practice’. Philosophia Mathematica, 21, 37–92.Google Scholar
Skyrms, B. (1981) ‘Tractarian Nominalism’. Philosophical Studies, 40, 199–206.Google Scholar
Smart, J. J. C. (1959) ‘Sensations and Brain Processes’. Philosophical Review, 68, 141–56.Google Scholar
Sober, E. (2009) ‘Parsimony Arguments in Science and Philosophy: A Test Case for Naturalismp’. Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, 82, 117–55.Google Scholar