The fine-grained metaphysics of artifactual and biological functional kinds

In this paper we consider the emerging position in metaphysics that artifact functions characterize real kinds of artifacts. We analyze how it can circumvent an objection by David Wiggins (Sameness and substance renewed, 2001, 87) and then argue that this position, in comparison to expert judgments, amounts to an interesting fine-grained metaphysics: taking artifact functions as (part of the) essences of artifacts leads to distinctions between principles of activity of artifacts that experts in technology have not yet made. We show, moreover, that our argument holds not only in the artifactual realm but also in biology: taking biological functions as (part of the) essences of organs leads to distinctions between principles of activity of organs that biological experts have not yet made. We run our argument on the basis of analyses of artifact and biological functions as developed in philosophy of technology and of biology, thus importing results obtained outside of metaphysics into the debate on ontological realism. In return, our argument shows that a position in metaphysics provides experts reason for trying to detect differences between principles of activities of artifacts and organs that have not been detected so far.     

Appropriate emotions and the metaphysics of time

Prior used our emotions to argue that tensed language cannot be translated by tenseless language. However, it is widely accepted that Mellor and MacBeath have shown that our emotions do not imply the existence of tensed facts. I criticise this orthodoxy. There is a natural and plausible view of the appropriateness of emotions which in combination with Prior’s argument implies the existence of tensed facts. The Mellor/MacBeath position does nothing to upset this natural view and therefore is not sufficient to block one drawing conclusions for the metaphysics of time from the nature of our emotions.     

A metaphysics for practical knowledge

Is Anscombean practical knowledge independent of what the agent actually does on an occasion? Failure to understand Anscombe’s answer to this question is a major obstacle to appreciating the subtlety and plausibility of her view. I argue that Anscombe’s answer is negative, and turns on the nature of mistakes in performance, and reveals a distinctive implicit metaphysics of mind and knowledge, structured by related capacities and exercises of capacities. If my interpretation is correct, then practical knowledge shares features with knowledge-how and knowledge-that, but deserves its own epistemic category.     

A trilemma for naturalized metaphysics

Radical naturalized metaphysics wants to argue (1) that metaphysics without sufficient epistemic warrant should not be pursued, (2) that the traditional methods of metaphysics cannot provide epistemic warrant, (3) that metaphysics using these methods must therefore be discontinued, and (4) that naturalized metaphysics should be pursued instead since (5) such science-based metaphysics succeeds in establishing justified conclusions about ultimate reality. This paper argues that to defend (5), naturalized metaphysics must rely on methods similar to those criticized in (2). If naturalized metaphysics instead opts for the weaker claim that science-based metaphysics is only superior to other metaphysics, then this is insufficient to establish (4). In this case, (4) might therefore be defeated by (1). An alternative is to replace (1) with the view that we should just approach metaphysical questions with the best means available. While this would recommend a science-based approach whenever possible, it would also allow for the continuation of science-independent metaphysics in domains that science has no bearing on and thus reject (3). The paper concludes that none of these alternatives is entirely satisfactory for naturalized metaphysics.     

Oracularity

Abstract: In contemporary North American contexts, to say that a claim is oracular is seriously to undermine its philosophical credibility. My thesis is that this negative judgement of oracularity is unwarranted and that it is rooted in an excessively narrow notion of what constitutes ‘good’ philosophy. More specifically, I argue that oracular utterance is appropriate to the expression of views that regard the phenomena towards which they are directed as radically, non‐systematically integrated wholes. Importantly, such views are falsifiable—or at least as falsifiable as scientific paradigms, which, in one important respect, they resemble. However, I argue further that there is good reason to think that such views cannot, without distortion, be expressed using the systematic‐analytic forms of argumentation that are frequently regarded as essential to the pursuit of philosophy. Yet the questions that they compass, concerning the way in which parts are related to the wholes that they constitute, fall squarely within the purview of traditional metaphysics. Thus, in proscribing oracular utterance we divest ourselves of the opportunity to contemplate world orders of potential philosophical interest that systematic‐analytic argument is incapable of conveying to us.     

Metaphysics Within Science: Against Radical Naturalism

In Every Thing Must Go James Ladyman and Don Ross argue for a radical version of naturalistic metaphysics and propose that contemporary analytic metaphysics is detached from science and should be discontinued. The present article addresses the issues of whether (i) science and metaphysics are separable, (ii) intuitions and understanding should be excluded from scientific theory, and (iii) Ontic Structural Realism satisfies the criteria of the radical version of naturalism advanced by Ladyman and Ross. The point underlying those topics is that successful scientific research presupposes metaphysics, and that basic epistemic virtues common to metaphysics and science may allow us—as opposed to what Ladyman and Ross suggest—to increase our understanding of the world and to put constraints on allowable metaphysical theories.     

There is no special problem with metaphysics

I argue for the claim in the title. Along the way, I also address an independently interesting question: what is metaphysics, anyway? I think that the typical characterizations of metaphysics are inadequate, that a better one is available, and that the better one helps explain why metaphysics is no more problematic than the rest of philosophy.     

Simplicity as a criterion of theory choice in metaphysics

Metaphysicians frequently appeal to the idea that theoretical simplicity is truth conducive in metaphysics, in the sense that, all other things being equal, simpler metaphysical theories are more likely to be true. In this paper I defend the notion that theoretical simplicity is truth conducive in metaphysics, against several recent objections. I do not give any direct arguments for the thesis that simplicity is truth conducive in metaphysics, since I am aware of no such arguments. I do argue, however, that there is no special problem with the notion that simplicity is truth conducive in metaphysics. More specifically, I argue that if you accept the idea that simplicity is truth conducive in science, then it would be objectionably arbitrary to reject the idea that simplicity is truth conducive in metaphysics.     

Science, metaphysics and method

While there are many examples of metaphysical theorising being heuristically and intellectually important in the progress of scientific knowledge, many people wonder how metaphysics not closely informed and inspired by empirical science could lead to rival or even supplementary knowledge about the world. This paper assesses the merits of a popular defence of the a priori methodology of metaphysics that goes as follows. The first task of the metaphysician, like the scientist, is to construct a hypothesis that accounts for the phenomena in question. It is then argued that among the possible metaphysical theories, the empirical evidence underdetermines the right one, just as the empirical evidence underdetermines the right scientific theory. In the latter case it is widely agreed that we must break the underdetermination by appeal to theoretical virtues, and this is just what should be and largely is done in metaphysics. This is part of a more general line of argument that defends metaphysics on the basis of its alleged continuity with highly theoretical science. In what follows metaphysics and theoretical science are compared in order to see whether the above style of defence of a priori metaphysics is successful.     

Substantivity in feminist metaphysics

Elizabeth Barnes and Mari Mikkola raise the important question of whether certain recent approaches to metaphysics exclude feminist metaphysics. My own approach (from my book Writing the Book of the World) does not, or so I argue. I do define “substantive” questions in terms of fundamentality; and the concepts of feminist metaphysics (and social metaphysics generally) are nonfundamental. But my definition does not count a question as being nonsubstantive simply because it involves nonfundamental concepts. Questions about the causal structure of the world, including the causal structure of the social world, are generally substantive because their answers are not sensitive to any alternate, equally good conceptual choices we could have made. I also argue that such questions are substantive regardless of the ontology of social kinds.     

The Modal Nature of Structures in Ontic Structural Realism

Ontic structural realism is the view that structures are what is real in the first place in the domain of fundamental physics. The structures are usually conceived as including a primitive modality. However, it has not been spelled out as yet what exactly that modality amounts to. This paper proposes to fill this lacuna by arguing that the fundamental physical structures possess a causal essence, being powers. Applying the debate about causal vs categorical properties in analytic metaphysics to ontic structural realism, I show that the standard argument against categorical and for causal properties holds for structures as well. Structural realism, as a position in the metaphysics of science that is a form of scientific realism, is committed to causal structures. The metaphysics of causal structures is supported by physics, and it can provide for a complete and coherent view of the world that includes all domains of empirical science.     

A ground completely overgrown: Heidegger,Kant and the problem of metaphysics

ABSTRACT

While we endorse Heidegger’s effort to reclaim Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason as a work concerned with the possibility of metaphysics, we hold, first, that his reading is less original than is often assumed and, second, that it unduly marginalizes the critical impetus of Kant’s philosophy. This article seeks to shed new light on Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics and related texts by relating Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant to, on the one hand, the epistemological approach represented by Cohen’s Kant’s Theory of Experience and, on the other, the metaphysical readings put forward by Heimsoeth, Wundt and others in the 1920s. On this basis, we argue that Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant remains indebted to the methodological distinction between ground and grounded that informed Cohen’s reading and was transferred to the problem of metaphysics by Wundt. Even if Heidegger resists a ‘foundationalist’ mode of this distinction, we argue that his focus on the notions of ground and grounding does not allow him to account for Kant’s critique of the metaphysical tradition.     

Beware of mereologists bearing gifts: prolegomena to a medical metaphysics

This essay considers implications of formal mereologies and ontologies for medical metaphysics. Edward Fried’s extensional mereological account of the human body is taken as representative of a prominent strand in analytic metaphysics that has close affinities with medical positivism. I show why such accounts fail. First, I consider how Fried attempts to make sense of the medical case of Barney Clark, the first recipient of an artificial heart, and show that his analytic metaphysical categories do not have the right kind of fit with the case. A proper medical metaphysic should involve a richer two way dialogue with medicine, and it should not just “apply” formal accounts worked out in other settings. Second, I argue that any effort to account for real wholes with extensional mereological sums requires all sorts of ad hoc, supplementary mechanisms that do the real work, and the full repertoire of these mechanisms involves inconsistencies and semantic shifts. Finally, I consider an alternative strand of work on non-extensional whole/part relations that is closer to medicine and that can deepen reflection on some core problems in bioethics, for example, associated with the determination of death when an organism ceases to function as a whole. In addition to the utility such formal ontologies have for addressing traditional problems such as the determination of death, philosophers of medicine should appreciate the increasingly influential role such formal tools are playing in the development of data system ontologies. Assumptions integral to these ontologies have far reaching implications for the way future research and practice in medicine will be conducted, and much greater critical reflection is needed on the full range of issues associated with the development and use of such medical ontologies.     

Neo-positivist metaphysics

Some philosophers argue that many contemporary debates in metaphysics are ??illegitimate,?? ??shallow,?? or ??trivial,?? and that ??contemporary analytic metaphysics, a professional activity engaged in by some extremely intelligent and morally serious people, fails to qualify as part of the enlightened pursuit of objective truth, and should be discontinued?? (Ladyman and Ross, Every thing must go: Metaphysics naturalized, 2007). Many of these critics are explicit about their sympathies with Rudolf Carnap and his circle, calling themselves ??neo-positivists?? or ??neo-Carnapians.?? Yet despite the fact that one of the main conclusions of logical positivism was that metaphysical statements are meaningless, many of these neo-positivists are themselves engaged in metaphysical projects. This paper aims to clarify how we may see a neo-positivist metaphysics as proceeding in good faith, one that starts with serious engagement with the findings of science, particularly fundamental physics, but also has room for traditional, armchair methods.     

Incubating a future metaphysics: quantum gravity

Synthese - In this paper, I will argue that metaphysicians ought to utilize quantum theories of gravity (QG) as incubators for a future metaphysics. I will argue why this ought to be done and will...     

A Mere Idea

In response to Khin Zaw's pragmatic model of reason, I argue for a normative,Kantian account in which reason actively impels thought andunderstanding towards transcendental ideals. Reason is neither constructedout of what is ready to hand, nor imposes moral laws from a transhistorical content. Reason's role is to provide the formof our ideas of the good in accordance with which we may shape thecontent in any particular culture. I argue that the well-rehearseddebate between nature and culture cannot be advanced without recourseto metaphysics. Since metaphysics in transcendental, not transcendent,what emerges from metaphysics must be revealed, interrogated andcriticised, never assumed.     

The Deductive-Nomological Account of Metaphysical Explanation

The paper explores a deductive-nomological account of metaphysical explanation: some truths metaphysically explain, or ground, another truth just in case the laws of metaphysics determine the latter truth on the basis of the former. I develop and motivate a specific conception of metaphysical laws, on which they are general rules that regulate the existence and features of derivative entities. I propose an analysis of the notion of ‘determination via the laws’, based on a restricted form of logical entailment. I argue that the DN-account of ground can be defended against the well-known objections to the DN-approach to scientific explanation. The goal of the paper is to show that the DN-account of metaphysical explanation is a well-motivated and defensible theory.     

Keep the chickens cooped: the epistemic inadequacy of free range metaphysics

Synthese - This paper aims to better motivate the naturalization of metaphysics by identifying and criticizing a class of theories I call ’free range metaphysics’. I argue that free...     

Colour, world and archimedean metaphysics: stroud and the quest for reality

This paper proposes a fundamentally opposite conception of the possibility of metaphysics to that of Barry Stroud in The Quest for Reality and other writings. I discuss Stroud’s views on everyday ‚truth’ and metaphysics (Section 1), on interpretation (Section 2 – replying with a theory of ‚quasi-understanding’), and his ‚no threat’ claim (Section 3). But the main argument (Section 4) is a response to Stroud’s claim that we have no right either to affirm or to deny the metaphysical reality of colours. Stroud’s view resembles Carnap’s (1950, Revue Internationale de Philosophie 4, 20–40), that experience can in some sense never settle the metaphysical issue between e.g. materialism, idealism and phenomenalism; though we can allow everyday ‚knowledge’ e.g. that there is a fallen tree in the garden outside, as something available on all three views. (Carnap takes the undecidability as a sign that the metaphysical issue is a pseudo-question; Stroud insists it is factual, but places it beyond our ken, ‚external’.) I argue, instead, that metaphysical argument is possible from within our conceptual scheme and epistemic situation (as in Gareth Evans’s arguments for realism over phenomenalism); that ‚external’ and ‚internal’ questions cannot be separated as Stroud wishes; and that if we really were denied knowledge on ‚metaphysical’ matters, that would infect our right to claim knowledge of ‚observational’ matters too. And I sketch a theory of colour that would allow us to conclude (at once ‚metaphysically’ and ‚internally’) that things are indeed ‚really’ coloured. For all his expressions of sympathy for Wittgenstein, Stroud’s metaphysics is remarkably Cartesian.