Review of "Metametaphysics"

This Review of Metametaphysics by Guido Imaguire is of a book collecting 17 contributions on that topic, edited by Chalmers, Manley and Wasserman.

The authors apparently form two opposing camps representing various degrees of "deflationism" or "anti-deflationism" (among other terms), and this therefore represents one of the many contemporary debates whose novelty consists partly in their not rejecting out of hand Carnap's position on metaphysics.

WIthout having read the review fully, let alone the book, I am given the impression of a menagerie.

At the beginning of the twentieth century philosophers were aware of their vulnerability.  Russell's metaphysics was savaged by Wittgenstein, and he promptly abandoned metaphysics, imagining that Wittgenstein was the man for the job.  Wittgenstein however, possibly impressed by how easy it is for a young kid to wreak havock with the metaphysical pretensions of a great figure like Russell, decided instead to concoct a philosophy the principle feature of which is to say nothing sufficiently definite ever to be refuted.

Though not fond of metaphysics, Carnap's did not shy from the kind of ambitious philosophical program which carried risk of failure, and was subjected to devastating attack mid century by representatives of an emerging sense of self confidence in American academic philosophy.

From those days of vulnerability we seem to have moved in the second half to a pluralism of philosophical standpoint which admitted almost anything which could not be confused with the standard caricature of the only philosophical veiwpoint held to have been definitively refuted (i.e. that of Carnap).

Have philosophers become irrefutable?
Do they now engage only in works of fantasy which cannot be dismissed on the ground that they speak only of an abstract realm which bears no relation to reality (even when it discusses realism)?

Like Carnap, I am a pluralist, now not only a linguistic pluralist but a methodological one.   But Carnap and myself are not idle fantasists.
Though we would not deny anyone the language of their choice, we like to adopt languages and methods on a pragmatic basis, and an undue proliferation of languages, or of metaphyics, probably will not provide a basis for any great advance in our knowledge either scientific or philosophical.

What then might constitute and undue proliferation?

Fortunately I do not need to answer that question.
The onus is on those who propose to motivate their proposal, and on those who adopt to select carefully for their purposes in hand.

What we still lack, which Carnap tried to supply but was rebuffed, was any way of sorting out the philosophical chaff from the real money.
The tools of modern logic were thought to supply the means to make that distinction, and though they may fall short of the whole task, philosophers have never come near exploiting them to the extent envisaged by Carnap.

Until these questions of analytic method are reconsidered and philosophy begins to be undertaken rigorously wherever that is feasible, we will be able to look upon such a collection and wonder whether the debate it represents can ever yield fruit.

RBJ