Three Arguments for Humility

Philosophical Studies 175 (2):461-481 (2018)
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Abstract

Ramseyan humility is the thesis that we cannot know which properties realize the roles specified by the laws of completed physics. Lewis seems to offer a sceptical argument for this conclusion. Humean fundamental properties can be permuted as to their causal roles and distribution throughout spacetime, yielding alternative possible worlds with the same fundamental structure as actuality, but at which the totality of available evidence is the same. On the assumption that empirical knowledge requires evidence, we cannot know which of these worlds is actual. However, Lewis also appeals to a range of familiar semantic principles when framing his argument, which leads some authors to suppose that he can also plausibly be interpreted as offering a purely semantic argument for humility in addition. In this paper I grant that these arguments are Lewisian, but argue that Lewis is also committed to a theory of mind that licenses a purely metaphysical argument for humility based on the idea that mental properties supervene on fundamental structure. Given that knowing which x is the F requires knowing that a is the F, the supposition that we could come to know which properties actually occupy the fundamental roles entails differences in mental properties between worlds with the same fundamental structure, violating supervenience. Humility follows right away, without any further epistemic or semantic principles. This argument is immune to almost every way of rebutting the sceptical and semantic arguments; conversely, almost every way of rebutting the metaphysical argument tells equally against the others.

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David Yates
Universidade de Lisboa

Citations of this work

Properties.Francesco Orilia & Michele Paolini Paoletti - 2020 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Humility Regarding Intrinsic Properties.Lok-Chi Chan - 2021 - Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Humility and metaphysics.José L. Zalabardo - 2023 - Analytic Philosophy 64 (3):183-196.

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References found in this work

Elusive knowledge.David Lewis - 1996 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 74 (4):549 – 567.
Knowledge and Its Limits.Timothy Williamson - 2003 - Philosophical Quarterly 53 (210):105-116.
An Argument for the Identity Theory.David K. Lewis - 1966 - Journal of Philosophy 63 (1):17-25.
How to define theoretical terms.David Lewis - 1970 - Journal of Philosophy 67 (13):427-446.
Reduction of mind.David K. Lewis - 1994 - In Samuel D. Guttenplan (ed.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge: Blackwell. pp. 412-431.

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