Does Your Metaphysics Need Structure?
- Autores: Gabriele Contessa
- Localización: Analysis, ISSN-e 1467-8284, Vol. 73, Nº. 4, 2013, págs. 715-721
- Idioma: inglés
- Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
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Resumen
Theodore Sider�s Writing the Book of the World (2012) is a sustained case for what Sider calls realism about structure (or, as I will call it here, structure realism). But what does �structure� mean here? Although Sider assures us that �structure is a worldly, not conceptual or linguistic, matter� (5, n. 5),1 the best way to get a preliminary handle on what Sider means by �structure� seems to be through the old question of whether a certain language (or, if you prefer, a certain conceptual scheme) �carves nature at its joints�. A language carves nature at its joints only to the extent to which its terms latch (more or less directly) onto the world�s fundamental structure. To use Nelson Goodman�s classic example, ordinary English presumably carves nature at its joints better than �Gruesome English�, which is just like ordinary English except that �green� and �blue� are replaced by �grue� and �bleen�.2 If �green� and �blue� carve nature neatly at its joints, then the properties being blue and being green are perfectly natural properties and, as such, they are part of the world�s fundamental structure.
Sider�s main argument for structure realism is that the notion of structure has many philosophically useful applications. The example we just considered suggests a first possible application of the notion of structure � structure realism offers a response to inductive scepticism (or at least to inductive scepticism of the �gruesome� variety). Since all emeralds observed so far have been found to be both green and grue, why, asks the inductive sceptic, should we infer that all emeralds are green as opposed to grue? The structure realist�s answer is that it is because �green� carves nature at the joints better than �grue�.
If the green/grue example gives us a first glimpse into the meaning of �
