Are there any questions merely verbal? (Especially metaphysical questions)

Eiwar September 08, 2019 at 16:47 2550 views 3 comments

There are in contemporary philosophy debates over deflationary character of metaphysic. It has two main cores: that metaphysic questions are trivial, and answers are obvious, and that metaphysic questions are verbal, they are about use of words, not about facts.
I don't believe, that there are questions completly werbal, and I think that every discussion has some base in real world.
Let's look at example, which seems to be popular, I found it in Hirsch's paper "Physical-Object Ontology, Verbal Disputes, and Common Sense" and in Sider's lecture "Is Metaphysics Abut the Real World":
The question is if a glass is kind of a cup? It may look like verbal dispute, but suppose that you are asking somebody to give you a cup of somethig to drink. When you want something in which you can drink soda, you may prefer to include glasses in cups. On the other hand, when you want tea, and you are afraid that glass would broke because of heat, you prefer to distinguish glass from cups.
Maybe some discussions over names looks like verbal, but even if we are arguing how to name our dog, there can be fact that influence our decision. All discussion are grounded in facts.

Comments (3)

T Clark September 08, 2019 at 22:35 #326183 0 likes

Quoting Eiwar

There are in contemporary philosophy debates over deflationary character of metaphysic. It has two main cores: that metaphysic questions are trivial, and answers are obvious, and that metaphysic questions are verbal, they are about use of words, not about facts.

It would be helpful to me if you would define what you mean when you say "metaphysical." It gets used a lot of different ways, often in the same post or thread.

Eiwar September 09, 2019 at 06:10 #326286 0 likes

Metaphysical as about what there is; questions like about mereology, temporal parts.

Fine Doubter September 21, 2019 at 12:56 #331947 0 likes

Eiwar, my own gut feeling is that there probably aren't any metaphysical questions that are solely verbal. Verbal questions are fun with words (another of my favourite hobbies). The marvellous gift of language has infinite layers of connotations, etymology, sense, usages, the contingent idiosyncracies in specific languages, etc.

I don't agree with the two camps you mention being the complete survey of these questions. When the public, who ought to be educated in thinking, can no longer do so, these questions are no longer trivial or obvious. When professionals tell me I haven't got a mind, I know matters have gone too far down the drain.

Brouwer and Black, like Peirce, are hot on when the law of the excluded middle doesn't need applying because it doesn't violate the law of non-contradiction.