Table Of ContentEMPTY IDEAS
EMPTY IDEAS
A Critique of Analytic Philosophy
Peter Unger
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Peter Unger 2014
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Unger, Peter K.
Empty ideas : a critique of analytic philosophy / Peter Unger.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-19933081-2 (hardback : alk. paper)
ebook ISBN 978-0-19-933083-6
1. Reality. 2. Substance (Philosophy) 3. Matter—Philosophy.
4. Analysis (Philosophy) I. Title.
BD331.U49 2014
110 —dc23 2013042262
1 3 5 7 8 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
For three younger Ungers,
My son, Andrew, my daughter-in-law, Nishi, and, by
far the youngest, their son, Cole, my grandson
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
1. HOW EMPTY IS MAINSTREAM PHILOSOPHY?
1. Most Recent Mainstream Proposals Are Concretely Empty
Ideas
2. A Working Idea of Concrete Reality
3. Observing the Concretely Empty in Some Recent Mainstream
Philosophy
4. Our Central Distinction and Three That Have Been
Philosophically Salient
5. The Concretely Empty, the Analytically Empty and
Mainstream Philosophy
2. PROMISING EXAMPLES OF CONCRETELY
SUBSTANTIAL PHILOSOPHY
1. Some Pretty Promising Examples of Concretely Substantial
Philosophy
2. The Substantial Scientiphicalism of Mainstream Philosophy
3. Memory, History and Emptiness
4. Various Specifications of Scientiphicalism and Various
Departures from Scientiphicalism
5. Interactionist Entity Dualism and the Problem of Causal
Pairings
6. Exploring Philosophical Thoughts that May Be Analytically
Empty Ideas
3. THINKERS AND WHAT THEY CAN THINK
ABOUT: EMPTY ISSUES AND INDIVIDUALISTIC
POWERS
1. Language, Thought and History
2. Thinking about “The External World”
3. Earth, Twin Earth and History
4. The Banality of Successfully Investigating Unfamiliar
Individuals
5. A Concretely Substantial Possibility: Individualistically
Directed Powers
6. The Propensity to Acquire Individualistic Powers and Its
Historical Manifestation
7. A Concretely Substantial Possibility: Individualistically
Directed Mental Powers
8. Generalistic Propensities to Acquire Real-kind Directed Mental
Powers
9. Wishful Blindness to Emptiness: Putnam’s “Transcendental”
Pronouncement
10. Reading Modal Claims Substantially and Widening Our
Philosophical Horizons
4. THE ORIGINS OF MATERIAL INDIVIDUALS:
EMPTY ISSUES AND SEQUENTIALISTIC POWERS
1. The Origin of a Particular Wooden Table
2. Some Thoughts about Tables and Some Thoughts about
Shmables
3. Origination Conditions, Persistence Conditions, and Boxing a
Logical Compass
4. A Tenet of Scientiphicalism: Basic Individuals Have No
“Memory-like” Propensity
5. How a Wooden Table Could Have First Been Made from a
Hunk of Ice
6. Tood and Tice, a Table First Made of Wood and a Table First
Made of Ice
7. Using Modal Terms Substantially: The Case of Determinism
8. Distinctive Material Objects and These Objects’ Distinctive
Matter
9. Sequentialistically Propensitied Concrete Particulars
10. Wooden Tables, Ice, and Sequentialistically Propensitied
Concrete Particulars
5. THE PERSISTENCE OF MATERIAL INDIVIDUALS:
EMPTY ISSUES AND SELF-DIRECTED
PROPENSITY
1. Material Sculptures and Pieces of Matter
2. Are There Inconveniently Persisting Material Individuals?
3. Pieces, Lumps and Hunks: A Problematic Plethora of
Persisting Individuals?
4. Is There a Plethora of Extraordinary Persisting Individuals?
5. Ordinary and Not So Ordinary Persisting Material Individuals
6. Using These Sentences Differently and Expressing Substantial
Ideas
7. Fundamentals of Fundamental Material Persistents
6. EMPTY DEBATES ABOUT MATERIAL MATTERS
1. Matter Distributed Particulately, but Not Even a Single
Material Individual?
2. Matter Distributed Particulately, but Only a Single Material
Description:Peter Unger's provocative new book poses a serious challenge to contemporary analytic philosophy, arguing that to its detriment it focuses the predominance of its energy on "empty ideas." In the mid-twentieth century, philosophers generally agreed that, by contrast with science, philosophy should of
