Those who think that metaphysics is just misunderstood grammar will react to my giving metaphysics some place or another in the system of knowledge.
Gonzalo Rodriguez-PereyraI think there is a metaphysical problem of the relation between mind and body. Thinking that there is no metaphysical dimension to the problem is an error.
Gonzalo Rodriguez-PereyraThe parallelism, or denial of any causation between mind and body, derives basically, and fallaciously, from a theory of substances as having complete concepts that include everything that is true of them.
Gonzalo Rodriguez-PereyraWhen I was eleven or twelve years old, I became for a while fixated on the question whether there could be two 'identical' stones. This is, of course, the question whether the principle of identity of indiscernibles is true and, as I formulated it then, I was bound to fall into confusion about it.
Gonzalo Rodriguez-PereyraLeibniz believed in freedom, both divine and human, and he thought that contingency was a necessary condition of freedom. That is, if an agent A acts freely when choosing X, then A's choosing X cannot be necessary. But there are some elements in his philosophy that seem to make contingency impossible.
Gonzalo Rodriguez-PereyraI would say I was a philosophical boy. Thoughts about 'identical stones' are the earliest philosophical thoughts I remember. But when I was a teenager I also thought about the more typical philosophical problems teenagers think about: the existence of god, the objectivity of morality, whether one can know that the external world exists.
Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra