László Kocsis

According to several authors, accepting metaphilosophical equilibrism goes hand in hand with abandoning our philosophical beliefs. Although this metaphilosophical view was introduced into philosophical discourse by David Lewis, it is well known that he did not give up his doxastic commitment to fully developed philosophical theories. On the basis of a rational reconstruction of Lewis’s metaphilosophical views, explicitly articulated in several places but presented in a rather scattered manner, I portray him as a doxastic or belief-based equilibrist. On this interpretation, endorsing equilibrism as a metaphilosophical position does not entail giving up our philosophical beliefs. Although equilibrism is deliberately a liberal metaphilosophy, an important component of Lewis’s equilibrism is a form of theoretical conservatism. The core of this conservatism is that, in philosophical theorizing, certain pre-philosophical beliefs are accorded a privileged epistemic status, among which our commonsense convictions are the most secure. This, however, does not mean that Lewis was a rigid Moorean who would have regarded philosophical theories that conflict with commonsense beliefs as illegitimate. Lewis’s conservatism does not amount to the indefeasibility of commonsense beliefs, since there are no sacred cows in philosophy, but rather to the idea that a key measure of the credibility of a developed philosophical theory is the extent to which it is able to preserve as many pre-philosophical beliefs as possible.

Metaphilosophical equilibrism is a view about philosophical theorizing. Its central claim is that the aim of philosophy is not to come to know the truth about substantive philosophical problems, but rather to construct and refine coherent philosophical views—sets of propositions—that are resistant to objections. This introductory chapter undertakes the detailed exposition of this metaphilosophical vision. Although equilibrism has been suggested recently as a possible approach in metaphilosophy, no fully developed version of equilibrism has yet been offered, one that systematically explores its central commitments and conceptual relations. This chapter aims to set out its precise claims, how it is structured, what its appeal is (why it is motivated), what difficulties it faces and how it handles certain key issues.

Wilfrid Sellars emphasizes the significance of metaphilosophical reflections, underscoring that philosophical theorizing is intrinsically connected to our conceptualizations of philosophy itself. He views this self-reflective attitude as a necessary condition for becoming and remaining a philosopher. In this paper, we aim to clarify Sellars's valuable contribution to the growing debate on metaphilosophical issues in contemporary philosophy by examining the main pillars of his views on the nature of philosophy and, in particular, on the aim of philosophy. First, we examine the synoptic view that Sellars believes to be the purpose of philosophy. To do this, we deploy the map analogy favored by Wittgenstein and Ryle, which presupposes a particular kind of reflective know-how (naturally based on factual knowing-that’s), on the basis of which we can reflectively know our way around where we are unreflectively at home. Secondly, we explore the nature and relationship of two fundamentally different understandings of the world and human beings in it: the manifest and the scientific images. We follow a dialectical path to what we believe to be the most comprehensive interpretation: the synoptic fusion of the two images, which is perhaps the most widely accepted today and most faithful to Sellars's intentions (as we understand them). Finally, we demonstrate how Sellars became one of the first proponents of the metaphilosophical approach, which has gained popularity in contemporary philosophy in recent years. The essence of this view is that the aim of philosophy is understanding, not knowledge. This paper is the introductory chapter of an edited volume on Sellars' philosophy, centered on his metaphilosophical views.

In Mind as Metaphor, Adam Toon interprets folk psychological discourse metaphorically. Based on Kendall Walton’s theory of metaphor, he argues that folk psychology ought to be understood in terms of prop-oriented make-believe that relies on representationally essential metaphors. Toon insists that this fictionalist view of everyday mental talk preserves what we commonly think folk psychology can achieve: it does not only rationalize but explains behavior causally. In this paper, first we raise concerns about Toon’s characterization of folk psychology as metaphorical. Then we proceed to show that representationally essential metaphors are incompatible with genuine causal explanation. And finally, we argue that no construal of mental fictionalism can preserve the epistemic virtues we commonly ascribe to folk psychological discourse.

This chapter argues that mental fictionalism can only be a successful account of our ordinary folk-psychological practices if it can in some way preserve its original function, namely its explanatory aspect. A too strong commitment to the explanatory role moves fictionalism unacceptably close to the realist or eliminativist interpretation of folk psychology. To avoid this, fictionalists must degrade or dispense with this explanatory role. This motivation behind the fictionalist movement seems to be rather similar to that of Sellars when he came up with the Myth of Jones, his proto-theory of mental concepts. He was faced with the problem of preserving the explanatory status of mental concepts without turning them into proper theoretical entities. By introducing the Sellarsian proto-theory of concepts related to the mental and outlining its main points, this chapter aims to provide a critique of the two versions of mental fictionalism that are arguably the strongest: Adam Toon’s prop-oriented pretence theory and Tamás Demeter’s expressive storyism.

Our main goal in this paper is to present and scrutinize Reichenbach’s own naturalism in our contemporary context, with special attention to competing versions of the concept. By exploring the idea of Reichenbach’s naturalism, we will argue that he defended a liberating, therapeutic form of naturalism, meaning that he took scientific philosophy to be a possible cure for bad old habits and traditional ways of philosophy. For Reichenbach, naturalistic scientific philosophy was a well-established form of liberation. We do not intend to suggest that Reichenbach acted as an inventor of naturalism; nonetheless, invoking the term and the idea of ‘naturalism’ is more than a simple rhetorical strategy for rehabilitating Reichenbach as a forerunner of this field. We think that his ideas can make a valuable contribution to contemporary debates, and that he presents an interesting case among the other scientifically oriented proponents of his time. After presenting a short reconstruction of the meaning of naturalism—or, more appropriately, naturalisms—in order to be able to correctly situate Reichenbach within his own as well as a systematic context, we discuss Reichenbach’s naturalism against the background of his scientific philosophy, his views on the relation of common-sense knowledge to science, and his efforts at popularization. To delve deeper into this topic, we present a case study to show how Reichenbach argued that in both scientific and philosophical discussions, it is necessary to move from the request and value of truth to probability. And, finally, we argue that the liberation of knowledge and nature was a socio-political program for Reichenbach, who talked about his own scientific philosophy as “a crusade.” By emphasizing this aspect of Reichenbach’s naturalism, we may be in a better position to situate him in the history of analytic philosophy in general, and in the yet-to-be-written narrative of the naturalistic movement in particular.

The age-old question “What is truth?” is not an unambiguous one. There are at least two different meanings. In one sense, it is a semantic question about the meaning of the word “truth” and/or a metaphysical question about the nature of the property of truth, that is, how truth can be defined in terms of other notions, if it is definable at all. In another sense, it is an epistemological question about the criterion or test of truth, that is, how we can recognize or accept (empirical) propositions as true. Ayer, in Language, Truth and Logic (LTL) and some other articles, tried to convince us that when we attempt to elucidate a theory of truth, we are only engaging in the epistemological project of finding the criterion of truth. This anti-semantical and anti-metaphysical view is based on Ayer’s (radical) deflationism about truth. In this chapter, I will argue that since Ayer did not accept that the criterion of truth is intimately related to the concept of truth, he can be seen as a deflationist about the nature of truth and as an advocate of a certain (Schlickian) kind of correspondence conception about the criterion of truth. His position would not be tenable if he had maintained what some of his contemporaries accepted, namely that there is a close connection between the two truth-theoretical tasks: the definitional and the criterial one.