I’ve been thinking about posting on this topic for several weeks. But it has been hard to get started. Writer’s block, I guess.
And then, earlier today, I posted a comment elsewhere which looks as if it might be a good fit for the topic.
For context, there was a brief discussion of the usefulness of ontology. And then walto posted a new thread to give his position on the questions:
My comment was a response to that post.
Here’s what I wrote (I’ve skipped the first two sentences):
The big problem that I see in philosophy, is an over-emphasis on logic. Quine pretty much wants to see everything as logic. The early Wittgenstein had the same problem. The later Wittgenstein seems to have recognized that as a mistake.
Several years ago, I read a paper “There are no ordinary things” by Peter Unger (Synthese 41#2, 1979). I took Unger’s point to be that there are problems with the way philosophers reason with logic. Okay, that was already my opinion before I read that paper.
In retrospect, I think a better title would have been “Ordinary things are not logical objects.” It seems to me that ontology could only makes sense if it were about logical objects.
I guess I could summarize my view as:
- Natural language is not a logic expression system.
- Natural language statements are not logic propositions.
- Ordinary things are not logical objects.
- Most logic disagreements are not really disagreements over logic; rather, they are disagreements over assumed premises or disagreements over meanings.
- Ontology is pointless.
- Epistemology is mostly silly, but it could actually be quite useful if people would dispense with its commitment to logicism.
That more or less explains why my viewpoint is often different from that of academic philosophers.