Abstract
This chapter offers different ways of comparing metaphysical points of view, and distinguishing between weak and strong notions of comparison. These encompass a spectrum of incompatibility to full agreement, distinguishing different ontological requirements that points of view must demonstrate in different occasions. Besides being the fundamental ground for everything else to sustain contingent and non-hierarchical relations between them, a description of Modal Perspectivism, which solves the problem of perspectival invariance, closes the chapter.
There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
—Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
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Notes
- 1.
One can agree in the fact that, even though is not explicit, Hautamäki (1986) offers an initial set of comparative ideas between points of view. Hautamäki (2016) expands on these. I will follow, however, the path I proposed in Colomina (2015b).
- 2.
- 3.
This reason might be the fact that two utterances regarding the same object apply different truth-values, without necessarily being contradictory. For details about how this is possible, see Colomina (2015a). However, of course, this would only work for semantic under-determination.
- 4.
I have tested Modal Perspectivism for consistency and coherence. Since this theory builds upon Hautamäki’s (1986) logical system, and he already proved for such a system to be complete for K, T, B, S4, and S5, then it is assumed that my theory is complete as well, regardless of the obvious differences that Hautamäki’s theory and mine carry.
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Colomina-Almiñana, J.J. (2018). Comparing and Evaluating Points of View. In: Formal Approach to the Metaphysics of Perspectives. Synthese Library, vol 392. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73655-6_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73655-6_5
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