What if many of metaphysics’ biggest disputes are “sophistry and illusion” because there is simply no fact of the matter about their answers, even when the debates are not merely verbal?
My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy.
1. Guest
Mark Balaguer is Professor of Philosophy at California State University, Los Angeles, and his work has focused primarily on metaphysics, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of logic, free will, and metaethics.
His book is "Metaphysics, Sophistry, and Illusion".
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/metaphysics-sophistry-and-illusion-9780198868361
2. Book Summary
In Metaphysics, Sophistry, and Illusion: Toward a Widespread Non-Factualism, Mark Balaguer defends a “widespread” version of non-factualism: for many central metaphysical questions, there simply isn’t any fact of the matter about the correct answer, even when the dispute is not “merely verbal.” He situates this within a broader anti-metaphysical research program he calls neo-positivism, inspired (in spirit) by David Hume: for any metaphysical question, careful decomposition should reveal only (i) “metaphysically innocent” modal/logical questions, (ii) ordinary empirical questions (to be handled scientisticly), and/or (iii) genuinely non-factual subquestions. He stresses that this stance is “metaphysics-friendly” rather than dismissive—engaging the problems seriously, even if the upshot is anti-metaphysical.
A major part of the book is devoted to showing how non-factualism can be a live option without collapsing into triviality. One key move is to pair non-factualism with a kind of fictionalism about our object-talk: even if there’s no fact of the matter whether claims are “strictly and literally” true, our mathematical and everyday theories can still be “for-all-practical-purposes” true and useful, and Balaguer develops this strategy starting with numbers and ordinary objects like tables. He then argues for non-factualism about two famous ontological debates: whether there are composite material objects at all, and whether there are abstract objects—where the latter is tied to the idea that the relevant existential claims are so semantically imprecise that there may be no determinate truth conditions to settle them.
To keep anti-metaphysicalism from forcing heavy-duty metaphysical commitments about modality, Balaguer proposes “modal nothingism”: roughly, some modal sentences are substantively true even though “there’s nothing about the world that makes them true,” yielding a metaphysically innocent way to treat modality (and certain counterfactuals) without building in contentious ontology. The later chapters then frame neo-positivism as an empirical thesis about the actual cluster of metaphysical questions in the literature—one to be supported via case-by-case analyses (and ultimately, an inductive pattern), rather than by a single “global” a priori argument. The book closes by gesturing at the broader worldview suggested by this program and urging a kind of “neo-positivist humility”: even a well-supported neo-positivist picture would remain provisional, revisable, and incomplete until the research program has been pushed much further.
3. Interview Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
00:47 - Metaphysics, Sophistry, and Illusion
02:25 - Metaphysical questions
04:06 - Scientism
04:37 - Conceptual analysis
08:01 - Free will
10:31 - Folk concepts
12:21 - Non-factualism vs. meaningless
15:13 - Huemer and vagueness
18:29 - Propositions and logic
20:31 - Plenitude of propositions
22:06 - Conceptual choices
25:00 - Mathematical objects
28:51 - Understanding platonism
31:48 - Plenitudinous platonism
38:34 - Non-factualism about abstract objects
41:48 - Platonist rejoinder
49:21 - Platonism as necessary
58:27 - Category mistake?
59:31 - For all intents and purposes true
1:02:05 - Does the world need abstracta?
1:06:19 - Indispensability arguments
1:07:34 - Truth as not the primary goal
1:11:17 - Atom example
1:20:05 - Counterfactuals and causal relevance
1:22:32 - Unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics
1:23:48 - First additional surprising fact
1:27:05 - Second additional surprising fact
1:29:07 - Composition
1:32:32 - Language of composite objects
1:36:00 - Privileging simples
1:39:52 - Conceptual pluralism
1:43:29 - Thin language
1:45:45 - Modality
1:49:58 - Analytic truths
1:52:09 - Metaphysical vs. logical modality
1:56:22 - Rigid designators
1:57:59 - Basic modal truths
1:59:42 - Conventions
2:04:07 - Modal nothingism
2:05:37 - Understanding brute modal truths
2:08:03 - Modal conventionalism
2:13:17 - Neo-positivism
2:20:27 - Supporting neo-positivism
2:21:02 - Different views of metaphysical modality
2:26:35 - Application to metaethics
2:30:37 - Non-factualism
2:32:37 - Value of philosophy
2:35:36 - Conclusion
