An apology for conflicts between metaphysics and science in naturalized metaphysics

Jaksland, Rasmus

doi:10.1007/s13194-021-00390-5

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Asserting metaphysical realism precisely amounts to taking a theoretical external—in Carnap's (1950) sense—point of view, since it involves a commitment to the relation between language and reality (Haukioja 2020). Naturalized metaphysics seeks answers to questions about what is really real, though the answers may of course not be known or even be knowable to us (Jaksland 2021). While both Quine and naturalized metaphysics seek to establish a metaphysics based on science, the metaphysical realism of naturalized metaphysics entails an optimistic answer to Quine's question of “how far our science measures up to the Ding an sich ,” as made explicit in Ney's rejection of Quine's “global pragmatism” in the quote above.…”

Section: Naturalized Metaphysics Against Deflationismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Naturalized metaphysics in the image of Roy Wood Sellars and not Willard Van Orman Quine

Jaksland

2024

Metaphilosophy

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The naturalized metaphysics promoted by Ladyman and Ross, among others, is often described as (neo)‐Quinean metaphysics. This association with Quine's naturalism can, however, give a misleading impression of the aims and commitments of this kind of naturalized metaphysics. Contrary to Quine, these naturalized metaphysicians endorse metaphysical realism and offer wholesale arguments in favor of the epistemic standing of science‐based metaphysics. Accordingly, this naturalized metaphysics comes closer to Roy Wood Sellars's evolutionary naturalism, especially since the theory of evolution is central to the criticism that naturalized metaphysics levels at nonnaturalized metaphysics. The paper argues that Sellars's naturalism is furthermore helpful (1) for explicating the naturalism of naturalized metaphysics, (2) for theorizing a more general naturalist basis for naturalized metaphysics, and (3) for suggesting where naturalized metaphysics is perhaps not naturalist enough, especially when it comes to considering the implications of the theory of evolution for its positive program.

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Section: Naturalized Metaphysics Against Deflationismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Naturalized metaphysics in the image of Roy Wood Sellars and not Willard Van Orman Quine

Jaksland

2024

Metaphilosophy

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“…As Rasmus Jaksland points out "there is no univocal definition of metaphysics" (Jaksland 2021), although he proceeds on the basis that metaphysics ought to be "naturalised" with a subject matter essentially indistinguishable from physics proper, except that the proper physical treatment has not yet become clear. We think that this approach is overcomplicated as well as apparently begging the basic ontological and epistemological questions: even the scaled back proposal of "Moderately naturalistic metaphysics" (Morganti & Tahko 2017) acknowledges that "metaphysics" (in the OED meaning) may explore "a basic possibility space in such a way that the grounds for the interpretation of scientific theories are laid" in just the way we will describe here.…”

Section: Meaning As Poetrymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Poetics of Physics

Jeynes¹,

Parker²,

Barker³

2022

Preprint

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Physics has been thought to truly represent reality since at least Galileo, and the foundations of physics are always established using philosophical ideas. In particular, the elegant naming of physical entities is usually very influential in the acceptance of physical theories. We here demonstrate (using current developments in thermodynamics as an example) that both the epistemology and the ontology of physics ultimately rest on poetic language. What we understand depends essentially on the language we use. We wish to establish our knowledge securely, but strictly speaking this is impossible using only analytic language. Knowledge of the meanings of things must use a natural language designed to express meaning, that is, poetic language. Although the world is really there, and although we can indeed know it truly, this knowledge is never either complete or certain but ultimately must rest on intuition. Reading a recently discovered artefact with a palaeo-Hebrew inscription as from the first century, we demonstrate from it that this ontological understanding long predates the Hellenic period. Poetic language is primary, both logically and temporally.

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Naturalized metaphysics or displacing metaphysicians to save metaphysics

Jaksland

2023

Synthese

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Naturalized metaphysics aims to establish justified metaphysical claims, where metaphysics is meant to carry its usual significance, while avoiding the traditional methods of metaphysics—a priori reasoning, conceptual analysis, intuitions, and common sense—which naturalized metaphysics argues are not epistemically probative. After offering an explication of what it means to do metaphysics, this paper argues that naturalized metaphysics, at the outset, is hospitable to doing metaphysics. The underdetermination of metaphysics by science, however, changes the picture. Naturalized metaphysics has to break this underdetermination, but the criticism of the traditional methods of metaphysics leaves no resources with which to do so. Naturalized metaphysics must therefore be more restrictive than originally intended to ensure that some metaphysical features avoid underdetermination. In this restrictive naturalized metaphysics, however, metaphysicians are only left the task of surveying the opinions of scientists which, it is argued, does not qualify as doing metaphysics. Thus, to fulfill its promise to save metaphysics, naturalized metaphysics displaces the metaphysician. Furthermore, the attempt to re-employ them via the principle of naturalistic closure is argued to fail. Metaphysicians should therefore not be happier with naturalized metaphysics than they are with the more explicitly eliminative trends in contemporary metametaphysics, such as neo-Carnapian deflationism, despite the promise of naturalized metaphysics, likely to Carnap’s dismay, to deliver justified claims about ultimate reality.

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An apology for conflicts between metaphysics and science in naturalized metaphysics

Cited by 4 publications

References 68 publications

Naturalized metaphysics in the image of Roy Wood Sellars and not Willard Van Orman Quine

Naturalized metaphysics in the image of Roy Wood Sellars and not Willard Van Orman Quine

The Poetics of Physics

Naturalized metaphysics or displacing metaphysicians to save metaphysics

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