Metaphysics, traditionally conceived, has often been defined as the inquiry into what lies beyond or is independent of experience, but which nonetheless pertains to the fundamental structure of reality. Thus understood, metaphysics produces claims that are not empirically testable. The 20th century logical empiricists famously—and ferociously—criticised metaphysics on these grounds as being devoid of cognitive content. Despite logical empiricism’s seminal role in the genesis and propagation of the analytic tradition in academic philosophy, metaphysics has made a remarkable comeback during the (...) second half of the 20th century. Contemporary analytic metaphysicians unabashedly refer to intuitions, conceptual analysis, and other genuinely philosophical, speculative methods in their search for insights into the fundamental nature of reality. Or so it seems. (shrink)

Preface to Journal of General Philosophy of Science, issue 2: Meta2physics. New Perspectives on Analytic and Naturalised Metaphysics of Science.

Philip Kitcher’s account of scientific realism in 'The Advancement of Science' (AS) differs from his account in 'Science, Truth and Democracy' (STD). We demonstrate that (1) contrary to appearance, Kitcher in AS proposes a so-called Kantian realism that is accompanied not by a correspondence theory, but by a hybrid conception of truth. (2) Also, we point out that Kitcher does not pertain to the “promiscuous realism” proposed in STD stringently, but falls back on his Kantian realism of AS at points. (...) Here, we question Kitcher’s claim that his promiscuous-realist conception stems initially from commonsensical be-liefs. (shrink)

Tobias Rosefeldt argues that in order to reconcile a physics-based fundamental ontology with the ontological implications of our everyday utterances, philosophers should pursue a ‘linguistics-based conciliatory’ strategy: They should refer to the results of linguistic research in order to avoid ontological commitment to problematic entities. Whereas Rosefeldt is not an advocate of radical forms of naturalized metaphysics, his argument is driven by the motivation behind pleas for a naturalization of the discipline. I claim that although there is a need for (...) reconciliation, Rosefeldt’s favored account falls short of this goal. More generally, I argue that so-called ‘conciliatory accounts’ fail to do justice to the motivation that necessitated them in the first place, as the role they assign to analyses of everyday speech in search of ontological commitments is at odds with said motivation. ‘Conciliatory accounts’, hence, sit uneasily between radically naturalistic and traditional armchair approaches to metaphysics. (shrink)