What is involved in the primacy of metaphysics?
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What is involved in the primacy of metaphysics? Christopher Peacocke1,2
Accepted: 8 September 2020 Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract The notion of explanatory priority is clarified. For A to be explanatory prior to B is for the correct account of the individuation of B to mention A, but not conversely. Exploring the relations of explanatory priority between entities does not involve the impossible enterprise of explaining why individuating conditions are as they are. Use-theoretic accounts of meaning and content are consistent with the claims of The Primacy of Metaphysics if they essentially involve a reference relation; and otherwise not. In the case of thought about abstract objects, we must distinguish between the enterprise of defining an expression and individuating an entity. When we do so, Fregean complaints about the project endorsing the principle ‘‘Individuation Precedes Representation’’ evaporate. The treatment of subjects of mental states in The Primacy of Metaphysics does not let in Johnston’s problematic ‘personites’, proper temporal segments of genuine subjects, once we distinguish: between multiplicity over time and multiplicity at a given time; between metaphysical conditions of individuation and merely ‘conceptual connections’; between the conditions under which something comes into existence, and the nature of that thing. Keywords Individuation Explanatory priority Metaphysics Use-theoretic Reference Personites I hope that others will learn as much as I have from reflecting on the vigorous discussion of deep issues in the essays by Paul Horwich, Mark Johnston, and Øystein Linnebo. & Christopher Peacocke [email protected] 1
Columbia University, New York City, USA
2
The Institute of Philosophy, School of Advanced Study, University of London, London, UK
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C. Peacocke
1 What is explanatory priority? The central question of The Primacy of Metaphysics is one of explanatory priority. In respect of explanatory priority, is the metaphysics of a domain prior to the nature of concepts and meanings concerning that domain? Or vice versa? Or neither? We need to be more explicit about what relation is at issue. By ‘the nature of A is explanatorily prior to the nature of B in the order of philosophical explanation’ I mean: (i) (ii)
the correct account of what individuates B—what makes B what it is, what is constitutive of B—mentions A, while in addition the correct account of what individuates A does not so mention B.
The question addressed by The Primacy of Metaphysics is: which relations of explanatory priority in this sense hold between the nature of entities of one kind, and the nature of entities of another kind, viz. ways of thinking or concepts of entities of the first kind? The concern is with ontological priority in Kit Fine’s sense.1 The structure of this explication of explanatory priority prima facie leaves room for no-priority cases. No-priority cases are those in which the correct account of what individuates A mentions B while the correct account of what individuates B
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