76. Christopher Peacocke | Metaphysics

What if getting clear on perception, number, and the self depends on metaphysics coming first, rather than on meaning or concepts setting the rules?

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1. Guest

Christopher Peacocke is Johnsonian professor of philosophy and director of graduate studies in philosophy at Columbia University, and his work has focused on mind, epistemology, and metaphysics. His most recent book is "The Primacy of Metaphysics".

2. Interview Summary

Christopher Peacocke frames the interview around a drive for understanding—especially of how perception, thought, and justification connect—rather than around “applications” as the main motivation for doing philosophy. He then lays out the central dispute from The Primacy of Metaphysics: what it is for one thing to be explanatorily prior to another, and whether the metaphysics of a domain is prior to (or instead depends on) our concepts and meanings for talking about that domain. Peacocke distinguishes three broad positions—“metaphysics-first,” “no-priority,” and “meaning-/concept-first”—and argues that the last view is generally untenable once you take seriously the idea that concepts are individuated by the relation a thinker must stand in to something in order to think of it under that concept. Because which relations are even available depends on what the relevant entities are like (their metaphysics), the domain’s metaphysics constrains the shape of our legitimate ways of thinking about it—an idea he connects to themes associated with Gareth Evans and uses to push back against concept-first approaches he associates with Michael Dummett and Robert Brandom. He also stresses a key distinction: having a concept (standing in the right relation) is different from giving a philosophical theory of what that relation is.

From there Peacocke applies this framework to several domains where epistemology and metaphysics have to “fit together,” linking the project to his earlier Being Known and its “integration challenge.” On modality, he sketches a constraints-based (“principle-based”) approach aimed at steering between mind-dependent accounts and David Lewis–style modal realism, while keeping modal knowledge intelligible. He notes affinities (and differences) with views in the neighborhood of Simon Blackburn, especially regarding how “responses” might relate to modal or moral truths. For arithmetic, he proposes a two-stage treatment: natural numbers are individuated by their application conditions (e.g., being “the number of Fs”), and grasp of number concepts involves tacit knowledge that guides correct application—his slogan is “individuation precedes representation.” He suggests this model might extend to moral properties too, again as a “middle way” between mind-dependence and the kind of metaphysically “inaccessible realm” criticized by John Mackie. Along the way he revisits Gottlob Frege: Peacocke accepts the non-negotiability of shared content across thinkers, but argues that any “third realm” picture has to be constrained by an account of what it is to grasp senses/thoughts—precisely where the relational individuation story is meant to help.

Later, Peacocke reflects on how his views have shifted since A Study of Concepts: he moved toward a more rationalist picture for logical constants, where understanding can ground appreciation of principles, and he gives tacit knowledge a bigger explanatory role than the earlier “conceptual role + referential constraints” framework allowed. He credits pressure from Fregean-style constraints and post-Rudolf Carnap debates about what it is to understand an expression, a theme he develops further in Truly Understood. He also discusses “boundedness of the conceptual” by criticizing John McDowell’s stronger claim that a true thought itself explains a particular judgment; Peacocke argues instead that what does explanatory work are objects’ having properties (and facts), not objects “under a mode of presentation,” echoing disputes he associates with Donald Davidson and G. E. M. Anscombe. Finally, turning to the self and the first person (in connection with The Mirror of the World), he distinguishes subjects of experience from first-person representation: many creatures can be genuine subjects without any first-person concept, and personal identity over time depends on the persistence of an “integrating apparatus.” He argues that even unconscious perceptual states must be states of a subject, because representational content is tied to its significance for the subject’s potential actions, and he treats richer, reflective self-consciousness as built up from this more primitive base—rejecting “narrative” conceptions as fundamental to being a subject of experience.

3. Interview Chapters

00:00 - Introduction

00:48 - Explanatory priority and metaphysics

10:36 - Individuation

16:34 - Mind-independence

19:20 - Integration challenge

22:47 - Primary thesis

25:35 - Understanding concepts

29:02 - The master argument

32:07 - Nominalism and Frege

34:57 - Numbers

40:09 - Higher mathematics

46:03 - Notion of concepts

51:59 - Boundedness of the conceptual

57:55 - Mathematical ontology vs. knowledge

1:03:21 - The self

1:12:12 - Musical experience and metaphor

1:24:40 - Variable experience

1:27:02 - Mendelssohn’s point

1:30:58 - Identifying emotion without having it

1:35:23 - Hypothetical example

1:39:18 - Relevance to other domains

1:43:25 - Value of philosophy

1:44:55 - Conclusion