2021-01-13

phil-2203

• Fundamentals of Metaphysics
• Our beliefs are kind of like maps and the World is the territory of the map
  • Realist view: we can know about the World that exists external to us (realism)
• Anachronistic
  • Anachronism
• Basic components of the World
  • Particulars
    • Things you can interact with
  • Cause and effect
  • Properties and relations
    • Relations could be seen as properties of pairs, triples, etc.
    • Provide structure to reality
    • What Plato called the Form
  • Propositions
  • Possible states of affairs
    • Including facts
• Propositions vs. properties
  • Related
  • Both conceptual, or intelligible, components of reality
  • Can one be derived from the other?
• Propositions use internal objects
  • Meanings are components of one's subjective world
    • Epistemic state
  • Relating this to maps...
    • Towns on a map are not the actual towns in the world
  • So, propositions appear to exist mostly in the mind

• Realism vs. anti-Realism

• Natural kinds

  • Some human concepts that are more "real" than others
  • Capture real divisions of reality better

• So, what is truly objective?

  • To a realist
    • The actual world
    • The "totality of facts"

• Dividing the actual world into bite size facts may be a human construct

  • Even if so, the World determines whether or not a given proposition is true or false

• Psychologism

  • Laws of logic

• Are propositions psychological?

  • If they were, they could change over time

• What is existence?

• What turns a state of affairs into a fact?

  • Facts seem to have an extra ingredient of real existence
    • Concreteness
    • A concrete object is one that can be causes and effects
      • Contrasted with abstract objects that are non-causal (accessible only to the mind)
  • Is this extra ingredient a property?