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2013, Scientific Metaphysics. Eds. Don Ross, James Ladyman, and Harold Kincaid. New York: Oxford University Press, 79-95
This is a critical, but sympathetic, examination of the manifesto for naturalized metaphysics that forms the first chapter of James Ladyman and Don Ross's 2006 book, Every Thing Must Go, but it has wider implications than this description suggests.
2016 •
This project investigates naturalized metaphysics as a recent trend in analytic metaphysics originating in the naturalist attitude of James Ladyman and Don Ross in their seminal work Everything must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized (2007). The primary focus, however, will be the more recent article “Neo-Positivist Metaphysics” (2012) by Alyssa Ney that originates in this tradition. The project will conclude that naturalized metaphysics is an unsuccessful attempt at an answer to the question ’how is metaphysics possible’. More precisely, the project will establish that any answer to this question must instruct how to succeed at attempts at assertions about the Kantian thing in itself. This requirement is the result of an argument that no other conception of ’reality’ is robust enough to accommodate an ambitious metaphysics. Subsequently, it will be argued that naturalized metaphysics is conceived by its proponents as an attempt at such an answer, but that naturalized metaphysics does not provide the required instruction. This problem occurs because of Carnap’s challenge to metaphysics. Carnap observes that no assertion can be made outside a linguistic framework which has the consequence that metaphysical assertions must be about the conceptual conventions of the linguistic framework rather than the thing in itself. It is the view of Ney and the other proponents of naturalized metaphysics that metaphysics is possible as a naturalized metaphysics; a metaphysics that appropriately defers or yields to the findings of science. The project argues that this requirement does nothing to ensure that Carnap’s challenge is avoided. The challenge is equally significant to naturalized and non-naturalized metaphysics, so long as both require that successful attempts at metaphysics must be assertions about the thing in itself. The project concludes that until or unless Carnap’s challenge is refuted, naturalized metaphysics remain impossible, just like the metaphysics it is supposed to replace.
The paper investigates the extent to which naturalized metaphysics, as proposed and characterized by Ladyman and Ross (2007) among others, requires a radical break with the conceptual space of pre-naturalized metaphysics. The investigation compares Ladyman and Ross’s methodology for metaphysics with that recently advocated by Steven French (2014). The comparison promises to be revealing because French shares Ladyman and Ross’s commitment to build a new metaphysics on the basis of a particular thesis developed in the philosophy of science literature, ontic structural realism (OSR). Thus differences between Ladyman and Ross’s and French’s approaches to metaphysics can be exhibited cleanly, without having to be pried apart from different respective views about the ontology implied by scientific theory and practice.
Every Thing Must Go argues that the only kind of metaphysics that can contribute to objective knowledge is one based specifically on contemporary science as it really is, and not on philosophers' a priori intuitions, common sense, or simplifications of science. In addition to showing how recent metaphysics has drifted away from connection with all other serious scholarly inquiry as a result of not heeding this restriction, they demonstrate how to build a metaphysics compatible with current fundamental physics ('ontic structural realism'), which, when combined with their metaphysics of the special sciences ('rainforest realism'), can be used to unify physics with the other sciences without reducing these sciences to physics itself. Taking science metaphysically seriously, Ladyman and Ross argue, means that metaphysicians must abandon the picture of the world as composed of self-subsistent individual objects, and the paradigm of causation as the collision of such objects. Everything Must Go also assesses the role of information theory and complex systems theory in attempts to explain the relationship between the special sciences and physics, treading a middle road between the grand synthesis of thermodynamics and information, and eliminativism about information. The consequences of the author's metaphysical theory for central issues in the philosophy of science are explored, including the implications for the realism vs. empiricism debate, the role of causation in scientific explanations, the nature of causation and laws, the status of abstract and virtual objects, and the objective reality of natural kinds.
The Philosophy of Science
Metaphysics of Science as Naturalized Metaphysics2018 •
This chapter outlines a metaphysics of science in the sense of a naturalized metaphysics. It considers in the first place the interplay of physics and metaphysics in Newtonian mechanics, then goes into the issues for the metaphysics of time that relativity physics raises, shows that what one considers as the referent of quantum theory depends on metaphysical considerations, and finally explains how the stance that one takes with respect to objective modality and laws of nature shapes the options that are available for an ontology of quantum physics. In that way, this chapter seeks to make a case for a natural philosophy that treats physics and metaphysics as inseparable in the enquiry into the constitution of the world, there being neither a neo-positivist way of deducing metaphysics from the formalisms of physical theories, nor a neo-rationalist realm of investigation for metaphysics that is independent of physics.
In Every Thing Must Go James Ladyman and Don Ross argue for a radical version of naturalistic metaphysics and propose that contemporary analytic metaphysics is detached from science and should be discontinued. The present article addresses the issues of whether (i) science and metaphysics are separable, (ii) intuitions and understanding should be excluded from scientific theory, and (iii) Ontic Structural Realism satisfies the criteria of the radical version of naturalism advanced by Ladyman and Ross. The point underlying those topics is that successful scientific research presupposes metaphysics, and that basic epistemic virtues common to metaphysics and science may allow us—as opposed to what Ladyman and Ross suggest—to increase our understanding of the world and to put constraints on allowable metaphysical theories.
Neoaristotelian Perspectives in Metaphysics (Routledge)
Why Metaphysics? A Rather Ambitious Introduction2014 •
This volume re-examines some of the major themes at the intersection of traditional and contemporary metaphysics. The book uses as a point of departure Francisco Suárez’s Metaphysical Disputations published in 1597. Minimalist metaphysics in empiricist/pragmatist clothing have today become mainstream in analytic philosophy. Independently of this development, the progress of scholarship in ancient and medieval philosophy makes clear that traditional forms of metaphysics have affinities with some of the streams in contemporary analytic metaphysics. The book brings together leading contemporary metaphysicians to investigate the viability of a neo-Aristotelian metaphysics.
Scientia - The International Journal on the Liberal Arts
“The Death of Metaphysics” as MetametaphysicsOver the years, many philosophers have proclaimed the death of metaphysics, the death of that area of philosophy concerned with the study of reality as such. But what exactly do they mean by this? What does this death-of-metaphysics idea imply? In this paper, I offer a way to articulate this idea by formulating it as a metametaphysical thesis about the non-substantivity of metaphysical claims. I argue that given this formulation such a metametaphysical thesis seems implausible. References Balog, Katalin. “In Defense of the Phenomenal Concept Strategy.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 84, (2012): 1-23. Chalmers David, David Manley, and Ryan Wasserman, eds. Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundation of Ontology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Chalmers, David. “Verbal Disputes.” The Philosophical Review 120, (2011): 475–513. Chalmers, David. “Ontological Anti-Realism,” in Metametaphysics, 2009, 77-129. Hirsch, Eli. “Quantifier Variance and Realism.” Philosophical Is...
Australasian Journal of Philosophy
Putting Metaphysics First: Essays on Metaphysics and Epistemology2011 •
2001 •
Journal für Entwicklungspolitik
Salzburger Vorlesungen zur Entwicklungspolitik: EditorialScience Journal of University of Zakho
Association of The Mthfr C677t, Factor V (Leiden) G1961a and Prothrombin G20210a Gene Mutations with Recurrent Spontaneous Aboration (Rsa) in Duhok Province2018 •
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PO-0835 68GaPSMA11 PET/CT in prostate cancer patients with biochemical recurrence: PET positivity predictors2019 •
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Results of the Exercise and Nutrition to Enhance Recovery and Good Health for You (ENERGY) Trial: A Behavioral Weight Loss Intervention in Overweight or Obese Breast Cancer Survivors2015 •
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A reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography method combined with matrix solid-phase dispersion extraction for the determination of teflubenzuron, lufenuron and bifenthrin residues in lyophilized coconut water2012 •
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Gaining competitive advantage through human resource management practices1984 •
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Nano-emulsions as vehicles for topical delivery of forskolin2017 •
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Comparison of analytical eddy current models using principal components analysis2017 •
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Seventeen Alpha-Hydroxylase Deficiency Associated with Absent Gonads and Myelolipoma: A Case Report and Review of Literature2016 •
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POTENTIAL ANTIVIRAL OF CATECHINS AND THEIR DERIVATIVES TO INHIBIT SARS-COV-2 RECEPTORS OF M pro PROTEIN AND SPIKE GLYCOPROTEIN IN COVID-19 THROUGH THE IN SILICO APPROACH2020 •
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High grade renal trauma in a child with rupture bladder and fracture pelvic bones2019 •
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Improvement of the Cargo Fleet Vessels Power Plants Ecological Indexes by Development of the Exhaust Gas Systems2021 •
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Biological Control
Transcriptional analysis of the interaction between the oomycete biocontrol agent, Pythium oligandrum , and the roots of Vitis vinifera L2018 •
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