A Priori Entailment is not Worth the Costs

Abstract

Is metaphysics essentially an investigation from the armchair? An exercise characteristic of armchair philosophy is analysis. The philosopher takes a term 'F' she is interested in and enquires into the necessary and sufficient conditions for something being an F. In a series of articles Frank Jackson argues that such analysis does play an essential role in metaphysics.

This essay evaluates his argument. In the first section, I reconstruct Jackson's inference from what constitutes serious metaphysics to the essential role of analysis. Section 2 presents obvious objections to this argument which cause Jackson to elaborate a two-dimensional descriptivism of natural kind terms.

This, however, leads straight into a dilemma, or so I argue (3). The final section bolsters my refusal of Jackson's argument by identifying a valid and less controversial alternative.