Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

Colin McGinn, a contemporary philosopher of some importance, (google "new mysterians") often discusses the history of the discipline in his blog. I'm fascinated by his recent comment on "Wittgenstein's Ontology," which you can find by clicking here.  Wittgenstein’s Ontology - Colin McGinn    Let us start our consideration of it with a simple question: what is ontology? By standard definition, it is the study of being, discussing for example what types of thing constitute the furniture of the universe. Sample questions: Are numbers real?  Are only the numbers we call "real numbers" real or are "imaginary" numbers also real? This is distinct from questions about cosmology or the mind-body problem, which are puzzles ABOUT certain of the pieces of furniture in the universe. These inquiries all fit under the broader framework of metaphysics.  Anyway, McGinn's first point is that Wittgenstein sets out his own ontology clearly in the opening...

Colin McGinn, via his blog, recently offered an intriguing definition of philosophy. He said it is "the study of logical reality." What did he mean by that? Well ... the idea was to put the question "what is philosophy" within a family of other such questions, which have known answers, and then to locate philosophy as a member of that family. So: what is physics? the study of physical reality. What is psychology? the study of mental reality. What is history? The study of historical reality. And so forth. If philosophy belongs in this family, then philosophy is the study of some [aspect of?] reality. If we say that it is the study of logical reality we say that it is at core about (McGinn's words here), "All the relations of entailment, consistency, and inconsistency that exist." Entailment in particular has to be understood in a capacious sense to make this work as a definition. One of McGinn's examples of how his definition may s...