STRAWSON'S DESCRIPTIVE METAPHYSICS - ITS SCOPE AND LIMITS

• Authors: Stjernberg Fredrik
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This paper examines some aspects of Strawson's conception of descriptive metaphysics, as it is developed in 'Individuals'. Descriptive metaphysics sets out to describe 'the actual structure of our thought about the world'. Three specific problems are discussed for this project. First, isn't the description of our actual thought about the world mainly an empirical task? Second, how determinate and consistent is the stuff we find, how determinate and consistent is our conceptual scheme? Third, who are 'we' here? Answers to these sets of questions are mainly negative in spirit. But all this probably doesn't mean that there will be no place for metaphysics, descriptive or revisionary, as a subject. The whole enterprise is perhaps more fraught with difficulties than Strawson thought, however.

Keywords

EN

CONCEPTUAL SCHEMES; DESCRIPTIVE METAPHYSICS; REVISIONARY; STRAWSON P.F.

Discipline

• PHILOSOPHY: PHILOSOPHY

• Publisher: Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences and Institute of Philosophy of Academy of Sciences of Czech Republic
• Journal: Organon F. medzinárodný časopis pre analytickú filozofiu
• Year: 2009
• Volume: 16
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 529-541
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Stjernberg Fredrik

• Fredrik Stjernberg, IKK Philosophy, Hus Key, Linkoping University, S-581 83 Linkoping, Sweden; www.klemens.sav.sk/fiusav/organon

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

10SKAAAA074813