Introduction

There can be few issues as fundamental as the relation between the metaphysics of some domain and our ways of thinking about it. The issue arises in every area of thought. If the metaphysics of a domain is explanatorily more fundamental than our ways of thinking about it, there should be features of our ways of thinking that are explained by that metaphysics. If the opposite is true, if our ways of thinking are explanatorily more fundamental, then what may seem to be a feature of the metaphysics of the domain in question will really just be projections of our ways of thinking. If neither is prior to the other, then there is some interdependence between the metaphysics and the ways of thinking that needs elucidation....

The Self

This chapter presents a metaphysics-first treatment of subjects and the first-person way of representing subjects. It develops a new explanation of the metaphysical principle that it is in the nature of mental events that they have subjects. It advocates the view that the identity of a subject over time involves the identity of a subpersonal integration apparatus, and contrasts the resulting position with Johnston’s conception of personites. A new treatment of the first person is developed that gives a greater role for agency than in previous accounts. Only by doing so can we explain how the first person brings a subject, rather than something else, into the contents of the states and events in which it is involved. Some of the consequences of the resulting agency-involving account of the first person are traced out.

Time and Temporal Content

This chapter presents a metaphysics-first treatment of time and temporal concepts and language, opposed to all forms of subjectivism about time. It defends phenomenal externalism about time, and also aims to explain away temptations to subjectivism about time. It argues that we cannot explain the distinction between mere sensitivity to time and representation of time in terms of perceptual constancies. Nor can we explain it in terms of mere sensitivity to time that is coordinated with other genuinely representational states and capacities. A different theory of the distinction is developed, labelled representational preservation, which has to do with the preservation and updating of representations over time. An account of three different kinds of present-tense content in experience is developed. The correct characterization of the kinds can explain away some metaphysical illusions about time and the experience of temporal passage.

Metaphysics and the Theory of Content

Is the metaphysics of a domain prior in the order of philosophical explanation to a theory of intentional contents and meanings about that domain? Or is the opposite true? There is a general argument from the nature of meaning and intentional content that, contrary to Brandom and Dummett, meaning cannot be prior to metaphysics. In every domain, either the metaphysics is prior, or else the case is one of no priority. McDowell treats all cases as no-priority cases; his arguments overlook the case for a metaphysics-first treatment in certain domains. Order of explanation must also be distinguished from order of discovery, something that distinguishes the metaphysics-first view of a domain from that of Devitt. We must distinguish, for each domain, the task of explaining how a metaphysics-involving view can be correct from explaining that it is correct. Consequences for current theories of meaning follow from the metaphysics-involving view.

Conclusion

The account of the relation between metaphysics and the theory of content suggests further investigation in four areas: the acquisition of concepts; the detailed accounting of what is involved in possession and acquisition in no-priority cases; the wider application, to other areas, of the principle that Individuation Precedes Representation; and the integration of a metaphysics-involving account of concept possession into the general task of integrating the epistemology and metaphysics of a domain. This concluding chapter looks at the connection between the claims of this book and further possible directions of investigation.

Magnitudes

A new realistic account of an ontology of extensive magnitudes is developed, formulated in Seven Principles. The principles are defended by the role of magnitudes in scientific explanation and in counterfactuals. Scientific laws can be formulated using this ontology of magnitudes. A metaphysics-first view of the perception of magnitudes is then defended by using this metaphysics of magnitudes. The metaphysics-first treatment permits explanation of features of the perception of extensive magnitudes. Notions of analogue computation, analogue representation, and analogue content are explained using this apparatus. Deployment of the resulting theory allows the development, against Kuhn, of a case for the objectivity of analogue perceptual content.

Ontology and Intelligibility

Four examples plausibly overstep the limits of intelligibility: Newtonian absolute space and time, certain conceptions of possibilia, quiddities, and Cartesian egos. This chapter argues that the materials of the earlier part of the book allow us to explain what the overstepping consists in. For any genuine concept, there is an account of the relation in which a thinker must stand to an entity in order to be thinking of it in that way. In all these four problematic cases, for reasons of principle, there is no account of the relation to the subject matter that would be required to be thinking of the elements of the problematic ontology. This excess dimension diagnosis contrasts with epistemic and verificationist accounts. The diagnosis is compared with Dasgupta’s, which appeals to inexpressible ignorance. It is argued that both the excess dimension diagnosis and inexpressible ignorance trace back to the explanatory emptiness of the problematic ontologies.

Numbers

This chapter develops a metaphysics-first view of natural numbers and real numbers. The account gives a philosophical priority to applications: to the application of natural numbers as numbering property-instances, and to the application of real numbers as ratios of extensive magnitudes. Each natural number is individuated by the condition for it to be the number of a property. The account is contrasted with the neo-Fregean approach to natural numbers advocated by Wright; but it does have a natural marriage with the postulationist approach of Fine. This metaphysics of numbers can then be deployed in combination with the principle that, for these ontologies, Individuation Precedes Representation. To be capable of representing numbers of these kinds is to have tacit knowledge of the principles that individuate them. The resulting account has both differences from and affinities with the views of Carnap.