Science and philosophy both express, and attempt to quench, the distinctively human thirst for knowledge. Today, their mutual relationship has become one of conflict or indifference rather than cooperation. At the same time, scientists and philosophers alike have moved away from at least some of our ordinary beliefs. But what can scientific and philosophical theories tell us about the world, in isolation from each other? And to what extent does a sophisticated investigation into the nature of things force us (...) to question commonsense beliefs? This book defends a form of naturalism which preserves the autonomy of metaphysics – the part of philosophy that aims to uncover the fundamental features of reality - while also keeping science centre stage. The proposed methodological perspective allows one to seek the right equilibrium between science, metaphysics and common sense. This is illustrated via three case studies, which provide a clear discussion of key philosophical issues. (shrink)

이 글은 쇼펜하우어의 과학철학에 대한 경험주의적 해석의 타당성을 살펴보고, 과학과 형이상학에 대한 쇼펜하우어의 관점을 제시하는 것이다. 쇼펜하우어의 과학철학은 비판적 합리주의나 실증주의로 해석된다. 이에 따르면 의지형이상학은 쇼펜하우어의 과학철학에서 어떤 의미도 갖지 않는다. 그러나 쇼펜하우어에서 자연과학은 형이상학과 동시에 성립하는 것이다. 그가 주장하는 선천성 개념은 존재론과 결부되어 있으며, 형이상학적 인식은 정신과 신체의 동일성을 표현한다. 쇼펜하우어에서 자연법칙은 사건들의 규칙적인 결합이 아니라 세계의 본성인 자연력이 표현되는 방식이므로 필연적이다. 쇼펜하우어는 과학적 연구가 존재를 언급하는 형이상학에서 완성된다고 본다. 자연사건은 자연에 있는 힘인 의지에서 일어나는 것이기 때문이다. 물리적인 것은 (...) 언제나 형이상학적인 것을 배후에 갖는다는 것이다. (shrink)

Computational philosophy is the use of mechanized computational techniques to unearth philosophical insights that are either difficult or impossible to find using traditional philosophical methods. Computational metaphysics is computational philosophy with a focus on metaphysics. In this paper, we (a) develop results in modal metaphysics whose discovery was computer assisted, and (b) conclude that these results work not only to the obvious benefit of philosophy but also, less obviously, to the benefit of computer science, since the (...) new computational techniques that led to these results may be more broadly applicable within computer science. The paper includes a description of our background methodology and how it evolved, and a discussion of our new results. (shrink)

I want to explore the possible connections between cognitive science and metaphysics. Of course, on one philosophical taxonomy, metaphysics includes the philosophy of mind. So all contributions that cognitive science might make to philosophy of mind would equally be contributions to metaphysics. But I shall bracket that portion of metaphysics.

This chapter makes the general case for metaphysics as a required partner to cognitive science in the debunking project, for providing an external standard to assess intuitions. It considers the specific case studies of color, temporal passage, and spatial unity. These illustrate the general role of metaphysics in debunking, while also shedding more light on the interplay between cognitive science and metaphysics. There is also a sense in which cognitive science might be thought to (...) have something very specific to say just about metaphysics. Talk of intuitions is only coming in as a mediator between these two claims: the claims in metaphysics that are potentially open to debunking are intuitions, and cognitive science is relevant to the debunking of these very intuitions. What emerges from this paradigm case of a belief that needs debunking are three crucial and interconnected aspects of the debunking project: psychological aspect; metaphysical aspect; and epistemological aspect. (shrink)

The metaphysics of evolution -- Scientists and the spiritual world.

In 1934 Charles W. Morris, then a young philosopher at the University of Chicago, visited Rudolf Carnap in Prague, where the latter was teaching on the science faculty of Charles University. Morris, a philosopher familiar with Peirce’s work and himself following the traditions of pragmatism, was impressed with the positivist program. Two years later he played an important role in Carnap’s move to a professorship at the University of Chicago. In the following year, 1937, Hermann in Paris published a (...) slim but eloquent book by Morris, Pragmatism, Logical Positivism, and Scientific Empiricism. Its thesis was that American pragmatism and European positivism were entirely complementary philosophical movements, and that the collaboration of the adherents of the two could lead to a new form of scientific empiricism more fruitful than either. (shrink)

This chapter examines the status of inference to the best explanation in naturalistic metaphysics. The methodology of inference to the best explanation in metaphysics is studied from the perspective of contemporary views on scientific explanation and explanatory inferences in the history and philosophy of science. This reveals serious shortcomings in prevalent attempts to vindicate metaphysical "explanationism" by reference to similarities between science and naturalistic metaphysics. This critique is brought out by considering a common gambit of (...) methodological unity: (1) Both metaphysics and science employ inference to the best explanation. (2) One has no reason to think that if explanationism is truth-conducive in science, it is not so in metaphysics. (3) One has a positive reason to think that if explanationism is truth-conducive in science, it is also so in metaphysics. (shrink)

Contributed seminar papers organized by National Institute of Advanced Studies in June 2001.

Philosophy of science appears caught in what Einstein (1933) called the ‘eternal antithesis between the two inseparable components of our knowledge – the empirical and the rational’ (p. 271). It wants to employ metaphysical speculation, but impressed with the methods of the subject it studies, it fears overreaching. Philosophy of science thus tries to walk a fine line between scientifically grounded metaphysics and its more speculative cousins. Here I try to draft some of the contour of this (...) boundary. (shrink)

This is a long critical evaluation of W. Sellars's book.

Due to the current availability of the English translation of almost all of Lesniewski's works it is now possible to give a clear and detailed picture of his ideas. Lesniewski's system of the foundation of mathematics is discussed. In abrief ouüine of his three systems Mereology, Ontology and Protothetics his positions conceming the problems of the forms of expression, proper names, synonymity, analytic and synthetic propositions, existential propositions, the concept of logic, and his views of theory of science and (...) metaphysics are sketched. The influence of Mill, Lukasiewicz, Austrian philosophy and especially Petrazycki on his thinking is evaluated and an interpretation is suggested setting him squarely in a tradition of classical Aristotelian logic. (shrink)

In this book I have attempted to give an account of some of the most im­ portant of Whitehead's philosophical writings - his writings on the philoso­ phy of science as well as his metaphysics. I have tried to show that although there are novelties in Whitehead's later philosophy there are also continuities with his earlier work in the philosophy of science. For a more detailed account of Whitehead's metaphysics, I would refer the reader to my (...) book The Philosophy of Whitehead (The Muirhead Library of Philosophy), Allen and Unwin, London 1959 (Collier Books, New York 1962). On the whole I believe my view of Whitehead in that work, at least as far as his metaphysics is concerned, is not materially different from that held in the present one, although there are some differences in emphasis and interpretation. I wish to thank the administrateur delegue of the Revue Internationale de Philosophie, Brussels; the publishers Allen and Unwin, London; and Sprin­ ger-Verlag, Heidelberg, for kindly giving me permission to publish amended versions of the following papers which I originally published with them: "Whitehead and the Idea of Equivalence" Revue Internationale de Philoso­ phie, No. 56-57, 1961, pp. 167-184; "The Relevance of "On Mathematical Concepts of the Material World" to Whitehead's Philosophy", in The Relevance of Whitehead. Ed. Ivor Leclerc (The Muirhead Library of Philo­ sophy) Allen and Unwin 1961, pp. 235-260; "Whitehead and the Philosophy of Time". Studium Generale. Springer-Verlag 1970, pp. (shrink)

Due to the current availability of the English translation of almost all of Lesniewski's works it is now possible to give a clear and detailed picture of his ideas. Lesniewski's system of the foundation of mathematics is discussed. In abrief ouüine of his three systems Mereology, Ontology and Protothetics his positions conceming the problems of the forms of expression, proper names, synonymity, analytic and synthetic propositions, existential propositions, the concept of logic, and his views of theory of science and (...) metaphysics are sketched. The influence of Mill, Lukasiewicz, Austrian philosophy and especially Petrazycki on his thinking is evaluated and an interpretation is suggested setting him squarely in a tradition of classical Aristotelian logic. (shrink)

While science is taken to differ from non-scientific activities in virtue of its methodology, metaphysics is usually defined in terms of its subject matter. However, many traditional questions of metaphysics are addressed in a variety of ways by science, making it difficult to demarcate metaphysics from science solely in terms of their subject matter. Are the methodologies of science and metaphysics sufficiently distinct to act as criteria of demarcation between the two? In (...) this chapter we focus on several important overlaps in the methodologies used within science and metaphysics in order to argue that focusing solely on methodology is insufficient to offer a sharp demarcation between metaphysics and science, and consider the consequences of this for the wider relationship between science and metaphysics. (shrink)

A renewed interest in the old problem of the relationship between science and metaphysics has been fuelled by the ongoing debate between naturalistic metaphysicians and non-naturalistic metaphysicians. However, I maintain that this debate is missing the mark because it is focused on the problem of the credibility of a metaphysics that is not ‘scientific’, instead of focusing on the presence of metaphysics in science. In order to show that metaphysics pervades all stages of scientific (...) inquiry, and after analysing the distinction between presuppositions and assumptions, I address the complex problem of the relation of metaphysics to truth and to experience. I advocate that there is an indirect relation of metaphysics to experience and that it is possible to choose between rival metaphysical theories. But metaphysics, according to my view, is not present in science merely as a background of presuppositions and assumptions. It is present at every step of the scientific inquiry and also in a later moment: the interpretation of the findings of science and the elaboration of unifying theories. Keywords: science, metaphysics, presuppositions, truth, experience, unification. (shrink)

In Heidegger’ philosophical science writings the problematic of science occupies an important place. There are several periods in Heidegger’ articulating this problem. Among the most important are the 1930s, especially his lecture Modern Mathematical Science, which is seen by the author as one of the most considerable Heidegger’s works. Divided into two main parts it examines the relationship between the mathematical and metaphysics and Descartes’ relationship to metaphysics. In this lecture Heidegger showed himself as an (...) excellent analytical philosopher, whose focus is not on historical-philosophical reception of modern science , but on an original picture of the rise of modern science and its links with the origins of modern metaphysics as a metaphysics of subjectivity. To understand modern science means for Heidegger also a deep philosophical insight into Descartes’ Rules for the Direction of Our Native Intelligence. And with this we have but to agree. (shrink)

This paper is a response read at a joint session of the Polanyi Society and the Religion and Science Group at the AAR Annual Meeting in Denver, November 16, 2001. Though a paradigm example of the conversation between systematic theology and contemporary science, Philip Clayton’s God and Contemporary Science is questioned for taking the natural sciences too seriously: it endangers the autonomy of theology and by implicitly advocating a grand metaphysics, it creates an unbridgeable gap with (...) ordinary religious meaning, and in regard to some theological doctrines, with science as well. (shrink)

: The explanatory priority of natural science is an hallmark of pragmatism in the Peircean tradition. In his case the pride of place accorded to natural science applied in the first instance to science conceived concretely as an empirically constrained hypothetico-deductive methodology but the privileging spilled over to actual scientific explanations conceived of as converging on a complete explanation in the limit. However, from his perspective this privileging of natural science did not exclude metaphysical explanation but (...) rather required it. In this paper I intend to explore the several different senses of "metaphysical inquiry" in the Peircean project as a step toward endorsing some and questioning others.Key-words: metaphysics, science, pragmatism, tychism, synechism, agapism.Resumo: A prioridade explicativa da ciência natural é uma marca distintiva do pragmatismo na tradição de Peirce. Em seu caso, o lugar de destaque concedido à ciência natural referia-se, em primeiro lugar, à ciência concebida concretamente como uma metodologia hipotético-dedutiva constrangida empiricamente, mas esse privilégio se alastrou para explicações científicas efetivas concebidas como se convergissem, no limite, para uma explicação completa. Contudo, nessa sua perspectiva, esse privilégio da ciência natural não excluía a explicação metafísica, mas antes a requeria. Neste artigo pretendo explorar os diversos sentidos de "inquirição metafísica" no projeto peirceano, como um passo em direção a endossar alguns e questionar outros.Palavras-chave: metafísica, ciência, pragmatismo, tiquismo, sinequismo, agapismo. (shrink)