Donald Cary Williams

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Donald Cary Williams (born May 28, 1899 in Crows Landing, California , † January 16, 1983 Fallbrook , California) was an American philosopher and professor at the University of California (Los Angeles) and Harvard University (from 1939 to 1967 ). He is best known for his theory of the tropics , which is one of the standard theories in metaphysical debate today.

Williams turned towards the middle of the 20th century in the English-speaking world widespread criticism of metaphysics , which was fed primarily from the tradition of logical positivism and the philosophy of the later Wittgenstein . With his contributions he made a significant contribution to the revival of metaphysical topics in analytical philosophy .

Williams mainly published essays in the fields of epistemology and metaphysics . He represented a materialistic naturalism , the theory of a four-dimensional space-time and developed his own theory of induction .

Life

Donald Williams grew up in Crows Landing, a rural district in California. After studying English literature at Occidental College, which he finished with a bachelor's degree in 1922, he went to Harvard to study philosophy. After his master's degree (1924) he went first to the University of California at Berkeley (1925-27), then to Harvard, where he received his doctorate in 1928. That same year he married Katherine Pressly Adams from Lamar , Colorado , whom he had met in Berkeley, where she was one of the few women to study psychology. The couple then spent a year in Europe (1928-29), during which Williams dealt intensively with the phenomenology of Husserl . Williams then took up a professorship in philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles, from 1939 until his retirement in 1967 at Harvard.

philosophy

metaphysics

Williams' main interest is metaphysics, which he divides into (speculative) cosmology and (analytical) ontology . While cosmology explores the basic elements of all beings (matter, spirit, force, etc.), ontology analyzes the categorical foundations of all beings (substance, property, etc.).

cosmology

In Williams's understanding, cosmology is an empirical discipline, and its results must always be viewed as preliminary. Williams cosmology is shaped naturalistic-materialistic. The world is structured materially and spatially and temporally. It is independent of any knowing mind. There are no deities or supernatural powers beyond the realm of nature.

Even abstract entities - such as numbers, properties, colors or relations - are only real insofar as they are part of spatial-temporal reality and insofar belong in the natural world. The realm of the mental also does not form a sphere of its own. It is not disputed by Williams, but from his point of view it represents only a rather insignificant fragment of being. Mental facts may not be reducible, but they are dependent on the physical and biological nature of things.

Against the Aristotelian tradition , Williams advocates a four-dimensional metaphysics. He believes that statements about the future are timelessly true or false than about the present or the past. We don't have to wait for the event to which they are referring to gain a truth value . All points in time are (timelessly) real, like all points in space. The experience of the flow of time is an illusion.

ontology

In ontology, Williams' main thesis is that properties are the real and only constituent parts of reality. Properties, however, are not universals , but rather "tropics"; H. Particulars with a unique spatial-temporal structure.

The tropics are the building blocks of the world. Williams referred to metaphorically as the "alphabet of Being" ( Alphabet of Being ), are made up of all the other, more complex entities. All concrete things are composed of clusters of tropes. The individual things have no inner substance that would hold the tropics together. Universal properties that are common to many objects are to be understood as similarities between individual tropes. For example, two different red objects represent members of similar color drops belonging to the class red.

Even relations , events and processes are understood by Williams after the tropical model. For example, if London is larger than Edinburgh and Dublin is larger than Belfast, there are two cases of the relational trope "Greater-Than". Together with countless other cases, they belong to the similarity class of the “greater than” relationships. Events are changes in which tropes that are in a given location are replaced by other tropes; Processes are sequences of such changes.

induction

Williams regards the solution of the problem of induction, how one can infer generally valid laws from observable individual cases, not only from a philosophical but also from a political perspective as a central task. The skepticism resulting from the problem of induction leads to an erosion of rational and liberal standards.

Williams thinks the problem of induction can be solved. In The Ground of Induction (1947) he makes use of the results of probability theory for the first time . For him, inductive inferences are special cases of the problem of validating samples .

Experiences can be understood as samples of a population . Above a certain size, the vast majority of samples are representative of their population; With the help of a statistical syllogism we are rationally entitled to infer general statements from them.

reception

Williams influenced a number of later prominent analytical philosophers with his work. He has taught Roderick Chisholm , Nicholas Wolterstorff and David Lewis . David Armstrong , John Bacon, Keith Campbell, Peter Forrest, DC Stove and DC Herd were also influenced by his work .

Fonts (selection)

  • The A Priori Argument for Subjectivism , in: The Monist , 43/2 (1933), pp. 173-202.
  • Ethics as Pure Postulate , in: Philosophical Review, 42/4 (1933): pp. 399-411.
  • The Inductive Argument for Subjectivism (1934), in: The Monist, 44/1 (1934), pp. 80-107.
  • The Argument for Realism , in: The Monist, 44/2 (1934), pp. 186-209.
  • The Realistic Analysis of Scientific Sentences , in: Knowledge, 7 (1938), pp. 169-178, 375-382.
  • Naturalism and the Nature of Things . Philosophical Review 53/5 (1944), pp. 417-443.
  • The Ground of Induction , Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press. 1947.
  • The Myth of Passage , in: Journal of Philosophy, 48/15 (1951), pp. 457-472.
  • Professor Carnap's Philosophy of Probability , in: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 13/1 (1952), pp. 103-121.
  • On the Direct Probability of Inductions , in: Mind, 62/248 (1953), pp. 465-483.
  • Form and Matter , in: Philosophical Review, 67/3 (1958), pp. 291-312, pp. 499-521.
  • Philosophy and Psychoanalysis , in: S. Hook (Ed.): Psychoanalysis, Scientific Method, and Philosophy; a Symposium , New York: New York University Press. (1959), pp. 157-179.
  • Mind as a Matter of Fact . Review of Metaphysics 13/2 (1959), pp. 203-225.
  • Dispensing With Existence , in: Journal of Philosophy, 59/23 (1962), pp. 748-762.
  • Necessary Facts , in: The Review of Metaphysics, 16/4 (1963), pp. 601-626.
  • Principles of Empirical Realism: Philosophical Essays . Springfield, Illinois, Charles C. Thomas 1966.
  • Universals and Existents , in: Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 64/1 (1986), pp. 1-14.

literature

  • Keith Campbell: WILLIAMS, Donald Cary (1899–1983) , in: John R. Shook (Ed.): The Dictionary Of Modern American Philosophers . Thoemmes Continuum Bristol 2005, Vol. 4, pp. 2612-2616.
  • Roderick Firth, Robert Nozick, WV Quine: Memorial minute of Donald Cary Williams , in: Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, 57 (1983), pp. 245-248.
  • ARJ Fisher: David Lewis, Donald C. Williams, and the History of Metaphysics in the Twentieth Century , in: Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 1/1 (2015), pp. 3–22.
  • Frederick L. Will: Donald Williams' Theory of Induction , in: Philosophical Review, 57 (1948), pp. 231-247.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Williams: Naturalism and the Nature of Things , in: Williams: Principles of Empirical Realism: Philosophical Essays . Springfield, Illinois, Charles C. Thomas 1966, pp. 212-238
  2. ^ Williams: The Existence of Consciousness , Mind as a Matter of Fact , in: Williams: Principles of Empirical Realism: Philosophical Essays . Springfield, Illinois, Charles C. Thomas 1966, pp. 23-40, 239-261
  3. ^ Williams: The Sea Fight Tomorrow , in: Williams: Principles of Empirical Realism: Philosophical Essays . Springfield, Illinois, Charles C. Thomas 1966, pp. 262-288
  4. ^ Williams: The Myth of Passage , in: Journal of Philosophy, 48/15 (1951), pp. 457-472
  5. ↑ See e.g. B. Williams: On the Elements of Being: I , in: The Review of Metaphysics 7/1 (1953), pp. 3-18 (here p. 7)
  6. ↑ On Williams' view of the induction problem cf. David Stove: The Rationality of Induction , Oxford: Clarendon, 1986
personal data
SURNAME Williams, Donald Cary
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH May 28, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Crows Landing, California
DATE OF DEATH January 16, 1983
Place of death Fallbrook , California