Can Metaphysics Be Naturalized? And If So, How?

Melnyk, Andrew

doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199696499.003.0004

Cited by 10 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Unlike physicalism, naturalism is not a thesis but a loose collection of ontological and methodological commitments that might best be described as a cherished “coat of arms” portraying a scientist slaying a supernatural dragon. At the same time, here is Melnyk (2013) on the difference between philosophy today and 30 years ago:…”

Section: Sec 1 Naturalism and Neo-naturalismmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…In this paper I will try to construct a neo-naturalist theory of mind that combines PGS's continuity with, among other things, Ladyman and Ross's Principle of Naturalist Closure (PNC) (p. 10, 37), necessarily relating new useful metaphysical hypothesis to fundamental physics and demanding a maximal overlap of physics with metaphysics, and Melnyk's emphasis on establishing cross-theoretical a posteriori identities (Melnyk, 2013, p. 83). To that I will add (Humphreys, 2016b) Transformational Emergence to help naturalism balance the opposing demands of continuity and novelty while keeping an eye on the meta-problem of consciousness for empirical reasons.…”

Section: Sec 1 Naturalism and Neo-naturalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As stated in section Naturalism and Neo-Naturalism, the version of unificationist naturalism that I have in mind combines elements of Kitcher's (1981) theoretical unification, Oppenheim and Putnam's scientific unification (Oppenheim and Putnam, 1958), Ladyman and Ross's “Everything Must Go” (Ladyman et al, 2007), and Melnyk's (2013) establishment of cross-disciplinary a posteriori identities.…”

Section: Sec 4 Unificationist Poietic Naturalism Symmetry Considermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Oppenheim and Putnam's empirical approach to unificationist naturalism can be supplemented by Don Ross, James Ladyman, and David Spurrett (RLS)'s “Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized” (Ladyman et al, 2007), which has attractive features relevant to the neo-naturalism considered here and is considered by Melnyk (2013) to currently be the “richest account to date (i) of why mainstream analytic metaphysics is objectionably non-naturalistic and (ii) of how metaphysics might be naturalized.”…”

Section: Sec 4 Unificationist Poietic Naturalism Symmetry Considermentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Neo-Naturalism, Conciliatory Explanations, and Spatiotemporal Surprises

Awret

2019

Front. Psychol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Some materialists believe that physics is rich enough to bridge Levine's Explanatory Gap1, while others believe that it is not. Here I promote an intermediate position holding that physics is rich enough to explain why this gap seems more intractable than similar inter-theoretic explanatory gaps, without providing a full-blown “physical” explanation of consciousness. At a minimum, such an approach needs to explore the prospects of empirical discoveries that can diminish the power of anti-physicalist arguments like Chalmers's “conceivability argument”2 and Jackson's “knowledge argument.” While this is not an easy task, recent advances in the physics of spacetime and information convince us that these prospects are not poor. The empirical bent of this approach suggests framing it as a naturalist theory of mind seeking to situate or make room for consciousness within our great naturalist system, but the reliance of this approach on recent (re)conceptions of time and information pulls the carpet out from under essential concepts like concreteness and causation, thus demanding a radically reconfigured naturalism, or neo-naturalism. The question that will frame this discussion is, “What could possibly count as an empirical fact that can help naturalize consciousness?”

show abstract

Section: Sec 1 Naturalism and Neo-naturalismmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Sec 1 Naturalism and Neo-naturalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Sec 4 Unificationist Poietic Naturalism Symmetry Considermentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Sec 4 Unificationist Poietic Naturalism Symmetry Considermentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Neo-Naturalism, Conciliatory Explanations, and Spatiotemporal Surprises

Awret

2019

Front. Psychol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The need for diverse stances on data that fundamental physics treats as the same data arises, according to Ladyman and Ross, from the scale relativity of ontology, which in turn arises from the fact that stochastic processes typically give rise to emergent regularities only when systems become suffi ciently large and complex for incomplete informational redundancy to have statistically estimable effects. An especially controversial aspect of Ladyman and Ross's view of the scientifi c basis for sound metaphysics (Melnyk 2013 ) is that, according to them, unifi cation only constitutes metaphysics when one of the stances entering into the unifi cation is drawn from fundamental physics; unifi cations between special sciences are simply theoretical innovations in those special sciences. I will return to this issue later.…”

Section: Dennett and The Role Of Philosophymentioning

confidence: 99%