A trilemma for naturalized metaphysics

Abstract

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.

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

“…Ladyman and Ross, in contrast, see the need for a further distinctly philosophical argument, the no‐miracles argument, to justify realism for science‐based metaphysics. An argument to this effect, however, easily comes to depend on the very same philosophical methods that naturalized metaphysics is so critical of, which has explicitly been argued to be the case for attempts to defend the no‐miracles argument (e.g., Psillos 2011; Jaksland 2017 and 2023; de Ray 2022). This is also the worry raised by Quine when he observes that such wholesale discussions of the epistemic credibility of science are prone to take the form of the illegitimate “first philosophy.”…”

What analytic metaphysics can do for scientific metaphysics

“…O' Leary-Hawthorne and Cortens (1995) advanced ontological nihilism, or 'nihilism' for short, arguing that 'the concept of an object has no place in a perspicuous characterization of reality' (O' Leary-Hawthorne & Cortens, 1995, p. 143). That is, the true ontology of reality is free of 2 See, e.g., Dorr (2010), Callender (2011), McKenzie (2012, 2016), Ney (2012), Healey (2013), Ross (2016), Bryant (2020), Guay andPradeu (2020), andJaksland (2022) for various accounts of "analytic metaphysics", "scientific metaphysics", and the divide between them.…”