DON ROSS, JAMES LADYMAN, AND HAROLD KINCAID ( eds ) Scientific Metaphysics

Abstract

What is ‘scientific metaphysics’, and why might we need such a thing? There is no univocal answer to be found among the pages of this volume. Rather, this collection should be regarded as an attempt to probe the sources of dissatisfaction many philosophers of science feel with respect to contemporary analytic metaphysics and to offer concrete proposals on how these might be addressed. This reaction against analytic metaphysics is not a neo-positivist dismissal of metaphysical concepts as meaningless; on the contrary, the reaction comes not least from metaphysically inclined philosophers. Chakravartty (Chapter 2) argues that any philosopher of science with minimal realist commitments will inevitably find herself dealing with concepts (such as properties, causation, laws of nature, de re modality, and so forth) whose analysis seems far removed from the details of scientific practice and which lead her into engagement with metaphysical theorizing. But when turning to the metaphysical literature, the philosopher of science most often does not find what she is looking for, despite the apparent overlap of subject matter between philosophy of science and metaphysics; frustration with contemporary analytic metaphysics sets in. The problems seem to arise from the questions and methodologies that dominate contemporary analytic metaphysics, and a closer look at these perceived problems helps to shed light on the motivations that generate a call for a different kind of metaphysics: a ‘scientific metaphysics’. Although all philosophers rely on intuitions and empirical input in order to reason about the world, several authors in this volume argue that the methodologies for doing so employed by analytic metaphysicians can be problematic. Humphreys (Chapter 3) argues that analytic metaphysics is flawed methodologically, in its use of intuitions, in too often drawing wide-scope conclusions from a domain that is narrow. A compelling example he offers is scale variance. Human experience has …