▶︎ 0:00 It's time to change how we think about metaphysics. In this lecture series, Making Metaphysics Functional, I'll talk about why we need to change how we think about metaphysics and how we can do it. Let me start by giving you a little overview of what I'll be talking about in this series.
▶︎ 0:18 I'm going to try to make the case that something's gone wrong with metaphysics, that it's become dysfunctional in a way. What is it that's gone wrong, and what can we do about it will be the main questions that I'll address.
▶︎ 0:31 I'll talk about how we can rethink metaphysics, what it can do, and how we can do it, while also preserving the best of what metaphysics has done in the history of philosophy, and make room for why it's so important to human life, and why it's a project that's never finished.
▶︎ 0:51 In the first lecture, where metaphysics goes wrong, I'll talk about the history of metaphysics very briefly, and why troubles arose for the original conception of what metaphysics is and what it can do. Then I'll talk about what happened in the wake of these troubles, which philosophers were totally aware of, and the ways in which philosophers tried to reconceive the project of metaphysics, especially in the second half of the 20th century, when metaphysics had a bit of a revival. But then I'll go through and critique those ways of reconstructing metaphysics, suggesting that they're all dysfunctional and diagnosing them all as arising from a similar problem.
▶︎ 1:33 This is a problem I call functional monism, and that is assuming that all the kinds of talk and language that we use in daily life, in science, in metaphysics, in law, that it all functions the same way or serves the same functions in human life.
▶︎ 1:52 Now, the alternative to these older conceptions of metaphysics that I'll be defending in this series of lectures is thinking of metaphysics as conceptual engineering instead. And I'll talk about that in lecture two. In lecture two then, I'll talk about what conceptual engineering is and how it can be an alternative to the old worldly discovery model of metaphysics. I'll take us through a little bit of a history of the idea of conceptual engineering, because it is an idea that's appeared at places in the history of philosophy before.
▶︎ 2:26 I'll also talk about why, at its best, if we think about conceptual engineering, it should be very strongly functionally-oriented, that is, directed by an understanding of the functions the relevant kinds of language or concepts serve, and also by a conception of what functions we want them to serve going forward. I'll talk about why we need to do conceptual engineering and how we can do it in a way that's not arbitrary but also doesn't have to be based on any kind of mysterious metaphysical insight. But I'll also suggest that this way of reconceiving metaphysics as conceptual engineering still connects to a lot of historical work in the history of philosophy and metaphysics.
▶︎ 3:07 Now, since the conception of conceptual engineering has to be functional, I take time in lecture three to say what sort of view of function we need here and how can we do it. How can we identify the functions of parts of language? And there I'll build on some work from linguistics in trying to identify this.
▶︎ 3:26 And I'll try to talk about why understanding the functions of different parts of language makes a difference to understanding and resolving some problems in classic and traditional metaphysics, including classic problems to do with properties and numbers. So I'll talk about how those problems really show up differently once you think about the functions of the relevant types of language.
▶︎ 3:48 Then in the next two lectures, four and five, I'll show how this kind of work on linguistic functions sheds new light on some really old, important, and classic philosophical debates, debates about morality and debates about truth. In lecture four, I'll talk about the functions of moral discourse, taking us into the discipline called metaethics.
▶︎ 4:08 I'll develop a kind of approach to giving a functional analysis of different forms of moral discourse and different forms of talk about what we should or shouldn't do more generally. I'll ask them, what do we need to move from general normative discourse to talk about moral discourse specifically. And then I'll move to show how this can change the way we look at and maybe deflate some traditional philosophical problems about morality in a way that's really important to help avoid both skepticism and nihilism about morality.
▶︎ 4:41 In lecture five, I'll turn to truth. There's been a lot of discussion, especially recently, about the importance of truth in this, what has been sometimes labeled as a post-truth era. Here, I'll start by applying the method of analyzing functions to understand the functions of being able to say something is true or false or being able to talk about the truth.
▶︎ 5:03 I'll address questions about the functions of truth talk there in a way that reconciles a lot of prior views but still doesn't show that just anything goes, or that it's arbitrary, or just a matter of power, what we call true. I'll show again how this enables us to rethink some classic metaphysical problems about what truth is, what the nature of truth is, how we can know it. And then I'll close that lecture by talking about how this can give both a clear and a powerful account of the value of truth, of why we should care about truth, why it's something to pursue, again, even in this so-called post-truth era.
▶︎ 5:39 Finally, in the closing lecture, I'll step back a bit to talk about what metaphysics, in particular, and what philosophy, more broadly, can do and can still contribute to human life. I will try to explain why this conceptual engineering approach to old metaphysical debates is important, how it can lead to conceptual revision when we have reasons to revise our concepts, how it can give us a new way of looking at what we should do with our concepts of race, gender, marriage, death, and so on, all these very practical concepts that play a serious role in shaping our lives.
▶︎ 6:17 And I'll talk about why this project is not optional. It's not something that we can just give up, that we could give up doing it well, and why it's worth doing, why it's central to human life, and why it's more urgently needed now than ever.