Peter Unger

This chapter shows that the method that Peter Unger (1979, 1980) has developed for dealing with the sorites paradox can, and perhaps should, be extended and applied to the semantic paradoxes—specifically, to Grelling’s paradox and to the liar paradox. After carefully explicating Unger’s earlier method for treating the sorites, the chapter expands on a very brief, compact argument in which he (1979) contends that, in light of certain putatively paradoxical semantic expressions, which are not obviously soritical, there are no expressions and, hence, no languages. The concluding section of the chapter identifies some important similarities between the liar paradox and the sorites.

It is widely believed that Putnam’s ideas about thinking constitute a substantial philosophical discovery. This is an illusion. But that, by very differently using the words that Putnam employs, one may express a salient concretely substantial idea, a thought as to how someone may be individualistically propensitied with respect to things external to her. By very differently using the words that Putnam employs, one may express a salient concretely substantial idea, a thought as to how someone may be individualistically propensitied with respect to things external to them. Various versions of Putnam’s Twin Earth cases, and of his brains-in-vats cases, and of Donald Davidson’s Swampman, are presented.

It is argued, through a series of philosophical exercises, that unless deeply informed by scientific thinking, little of importance will be gained from philosophy anymore, at least as concerns concrete reality. The most salient exercise examines a logically exhaustive discussion of all positions on the question of whether our actual concrete reality comprises material individuals and the question of whether it comprises mental individuals, noticing nine salient positions on the matter. While several can be ruled out, several remain standing, with none being more credible than its negation. But, others, including competing speculations as to what concrete worlds there may be beyond our actual world, make the leading point as well.

This chapter defends the author’s rendition of Scientiphicalism against the charge that it speaks of complex, non-basic material objects. Among those addressed most saliently are David Lewis and Peter van Inwagen. It is noted that philosophers fail to distinguish adequately between, say, a copper cube, a copper physical object shaped perfectly cubically, a perfectly cubical arrangement of copper atoms, and so-called mereological sums of such atoms. All of this is seen to be trivial, but the ubiquity of such simple mistakes remains astonishing. An appendix rejects a concretely empty objection to Lewis’s modal realism.

It's been agreed for decades that not only does Determinism pose a big problem for our choosing from available alternatives, but its denial seems to pose a bit of a problem, too. It's argued here that only Determinism, and not its denial, means no real choice for us. But, what explains the appeal of the thought that, where things aren't fully determined, to that extent they're just a matter of chance? It's the dominance of metaphysical suppositions that, together, comprise Scientiphicalism: Wholly composed of such mindless physical parts as electrons, you are a being whose powers are all physical powers, physically deriving from the powers of your parts and their physical arrangements. Scientiphicalism conflicts with your having real choice. Some fairly conservative alternatives to Scientiphicalism may allow for choice. Two are briefly discussed: On the further‐fetched, you are a Cartesian mental being, a nonphysical being in powerful interaction with physical things. On the more conservative approach, you are wholly composed of physical parts, but some of your powers are radically emergent, including your power to choose. Finally, it's argued that, if you choose, you must be, to some extent, exempt from natural laws.

In this controversial volume (originally published in 1975) Peter Unger suggests that, not only can nothing ever be known, but no one can ever have a reason at all for anything. A consequence of this is that we cannot have any realistic emotional ties: it can never be conclusively said that someone is happy or sad about anything. Finally he argues that no one can ever say, let alone believe, that anything is the case. In order to get beyond this apparent bind - and this condition of ignorance - Unger proposes a radical departure from the linguistic and epistemological systems we have become accustomed to. Epistemologists, as well as philosophers of mind and language will undoubtedly find in this study of the limitations of language an invaluable philosophical perspective.

In this short volume (first published in 1984), Peter Unger questions the objective answers that have have been given to traditional problems in philosopy. He casts doubt on the generally unquestioned view that fundamental questionspertaining to meaning and existence have direct solutions, arguing that by their very nature they remain ultimiately unanswerable. He suggests that the answers to these questions must be viewed in terms of a general philosophical and semantic relativily, proposing that truth cannot be arrived at in absolute sense but rather with relative degrees of precision. Written with unusual clarity, Philosophical Relativity, is provocative, highly readable and ambitious in scope.

This chapter presents another new challenge to Scientiphicalism. With this challenge, one will see Scientiphicalism to comport very poorly even with his/her central beliefs as to his/her own apparent conscious experiencing, as well as comporting quite terribly with his/her central beliefs as to his/her own believed choosing. The chapter discusses the problem of the many, the experiential problem of the many, how the singularity of experiencing may favor substantial dualism, questions of spatial boundary, the problem of too many real choosers, wholly immaterial souls versus emergentist physical-and-mental complexes, and the wholly immaterial souls of nonhuman animals.

In the last couple of chapters, the author has offered considerations to favor substantial dualism over its salient, more conservative rivals, whether the favored substantial dualism be only a pessimistic form of the thesis or whether it be an optimistic dualism that is favored. In either event, we should want a substantial dualism that is, in the best sense of the expression, a humanly realistic philosophy. For that to transpire, we should articulate a substantial dualism that does well by the problem of our unconscious quality. With a heightened awareness of this problem, and of how it may impact any substantial dualism, we may better appreciate such dualist hypotheses as can, in due course, allow for an apt dualistic answer to the proposed problem. This chapter first examines objects that are aptly qualified and experiencers who are differently qualified just as aptly. It then reconsiders the problem of our unconscious quality and how it is historically denied by Rene Descartes, and David Hume's philosophy about existence compared with that of Descartes.

Nothing remotely like Scientiphicalism is any acceptable metaphysic. And, neither is any materialist philosophy any true philosophy, leastways none that has ever been made available. Rather, as the weight of relevant philosophic consideration suggests, we do better to pursue a quasi-Cartesian substantial dualism, on which each of us has, or is, an immaterial soul. This chapter explores the concept of disembodied souls, immaterial OTHERONS versus material OTHERONS, metaphysical asymmetries and further forms of substantial dualism, some questions about disembodiment and reincarnation, and the question of disembodied souls in relation to the question of an Almighty Creator.

When we communicate with each other, we interact with an external reality, quite distinct from each other. Nowadays, we take it that this possibly mysterious external reality, through which we communicate, is physical reality. But, what can any of this really amount to? In presenting the Mystery of the Physical, this book presented, in two Formulations, a doctrine concerning the denial of quality. According to the denial of qualities, all the world's matter lacks qualities, even as a lot lacks anything even easily confused with qualities, however well matter may fare with the other two sorts of basic properties for physical things, the spatial and the propensities. This chapter discusses the concepts of spatially extensible qualities, intelligible physical reality and a principle of constrained contingency, mutually isolated concrete worlds and distinct eons of the actual world, whether the recognized physical properties might be considered spatially extensible qualities, the identity theory of qualities and dispositions, an antinomy of spatially extensible quality, and the philosophy of David Hume and David Lewis.

This chapter considers some clearly distinct basic bodies, as with some spatially separate spherical red particles. It suggests that it is in conceiving such clearly spatial bodies as are so spatially separate that we humans may have our clearest conception as to how it is that, all at the very same time, there may be several distinct concrete individuals and not, say, just a single concretism multiply conceived. The chapter explores concrete reality and substantial dualism, sameness and difference of concrete individuals, conception of nonspatial simultaneous souls, Berkeleian idealism, Cartesian dualism, substantial individuals, the hypothesis of spacelike extension, the deflationary approach, a hypothesized dimension far more like space than time, an analogical conception of nonspatial souls, how nonspatial souls might precede even the initial physical embodiment, whether immaterial souls ever change propensitively, a constitutional view of souls, fusional dualism, the mental problems of the many, and the problem of our unconscious quality.

We human beings are quite limited, it is painfully plain, in our experiencing, our thinking, and our understanding. Yet, even when mindful of our human limitations, we may perhaps aspire to a humanly intelligible philosophy of the world that is, nonetheless, a fairly substantial philosophy. This chapter provides some quite simple and obvious observations and then attempts to articulate some instructive implications of those observations. The implications may also be features of a humanly realistic philosophy. Each of us has a power to think, and a power to experience. When one's power to think is exercised, or his/her propensity is manifested, then he/she actually does think. Rene Descartes famously held that, at every moment of his existence, he was, and must be, conscious. In addition to having a propensity toward experience, quite certainly manifested in certain conditions, one may also have a real propensity toward unconsciousness. When writing philosophically about himself, David Hume is sometimes so extreme as to claim he cannot really have any idea of himself.

This chapter argues that Scientiphicalism is incompatible with our having a power really to choose. The most salient form for the Scientifically View is materialism, also known as physicalism. Recent objections to physicalism do not differ greatly from a certain aspect of the Cartesian paradigm. When it is this sort of incompatibility that is claimed, the conscious episodes in focus are purely passive events involving the experiencing subject. It is precisely this conflict with our really choosing that is such a huge problem for any materialistic philosophy. The chapter begins with a discussion on real choice, and then explores free will and determinism, real choice and inevitabilism, simple physical entities and their basic properties, reciprocal propensities and physical laws, objective probabilities, random happenings, an “infinitely deep hierarchy” of physical powers, physical conservation laws, radically self-directed power, and the relationship between natural law and real choice.

This chapter explores how it may be that substantial individuals are powered, or propensities. It discusses the propensity of basic physical entities and the propensity of other possible concrete, including immaterial minds. The chapter then articulates an idea of individualistically directed propensities or, for short, individualistic powers. There will be some worlds in which each of the its physical objects has propensities with respect to the sizes of other physical things, with which it is thus set to interact. The chapter also considers the hypothesis that all physical propensities concern only something as to quality; that is, whenever a physical entity has a propensity with regard to physical reality, the power always concerns, or it is always with respect to, only something as to the quality of some physical things. It furthermore discusses propensity, possibility, accident, and probability, as well as individualistically directed propensities and Cartesian dualism, Scientiphicalism, self-directed propensity and experiential awareness, temporal monotony and temporal change, propensity for monotony and propensity for change, basic concrete, propensity for annihilation, and propensity for continuation.

For more than five decades, nearly all work by mainstream philosophers made no serious attempt to explore the nature of physical reality, even though most of them now take this to be all, or nearly all, of reality. While we have worried much about the nature of our own experiences and thoughts and words, we have worried little about the nature of the vast physical world that, as we ourselves believe, has them all as only a small part. This book sketches the metaphysical worldview that, for many years now and with no letup anywhere in sight, has been the dominant metaphysic of academic philosophy. It coins the naming phrase “The Scientifically Metaphysic” and the equivalent single word Scientiphicalism. The book also describes the so-called denial of qualities and discusses three categories of basic natural property of whatever entities, or entity, might constitute physical reality: spatial, propensities, and qualities.

The idea of physical things as extensible qualified is so aptly related to our power to think experientially that it may serve us humans fairly well when it comes to our clearly conceiving physical individuals. Accordingly, the physical need not be so opaque to us as it sometimes seemed to many philosophers. When we speak of a certain quality exemplified in an individual, the matter is related more perspicuously by saying that the particular is qualified in a certain way. Whatever its deficiencies, the restrictive empiricism epitomized by David Hume should not be completely abandoned. Our power to experience cannot be our only resource for understanding concrete reality. This chapter examines the hypothesis that: in your fully conceiving a physical entity as being Monochromatic Spatially Extensible Blue, you will be experiential blue. It also discusses the notion of spatially extensible colors, spatial bodies, insensate bodies as pervaded with tactile qualities, extensible qualities, experiential qualities, and metaphysics.

Explores the distinction between the prevalent approach to ostensible intuitions, which takes such intuitions to be indicative of semantic conditions, and the broadly psychological approach, which does not. An attack is made against Kripke and Putnam's causal theory of reference via Putnam's Twin Earth thought experiments. Our responses to such examples may be distinguished into two types, a dominant response, and a dominated response. The common aspect to all demonstrable counterexamples to the causal theory of reference turns on the individual differences among the responses. The prevalent approach must deny semantic competence to dissenting agents. We may maintain, in a relativist spirit, that there is no absolutely right answer in such cases. Kripke's distinction between epistemological examples and metaphysical examples is noted and the two are united in order to generate combined examples. The failure of the causal theory of reference to deal with any such examples in a successful and systematic way tells against the prospect of maintaining an internalized semantics. Historical and current versions of the causal theory of reference are explored, with neither accurately capturing our natural responses, strengthening the objection against the prevalent approach and supporting the broadly psychological approach, which in contrast to the prevalent approach attributes agents’ responses to the examples to their egocentric bias, which may not be fully rational. As such, the relativist now has a direct reply to the objection from semantic intuitions, this being that such common sense intuitions are not a function of an internalized semantics. Supposing that the broadly psychological approach is no stronger than the prevalent approach merely strengthens the relativist's position.