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Don Ross, James Ladyman, and Harold Kincaid (eds.): Scientific Metaphysics

Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013, 243 pp, €44.18, ISBN: 978-0199696499

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Notes

  1. Correspondingly, Craig Callender recalls the story of Hegel’s seven planets: although Hegel “is unjustly accused of having decreed that there are necessarily seven planets” (Callender 2011, note 6), philosophers of science nevertheless can profit from it in order to remain sensitive to the riskiness of speculative metaphysics.

  2. Borrowing a famous slogan from a former German chancellor, Humphreys apparently has in mind that if one has intuitions, one needs a doctor.

  3. Therefore, the running example in analytic philosophy is still “Socrates is wise”, whereas physics “long ago outran the conceptual abilities of most speculative ontologists” (p. 75).

  4. A (rational) analytic metaphysician might even argue that this way time is understood in the ‘bold’ presentist’s way—for, according to the B-theorists, time is essentially time order.

  5. The example is crucial, for the scientific metaphysics par excellence, structural realism, has its support from fundamental quantum physics precisely because of that violation of PII (see Ladyman and Ross 2007, chap. 3).

  6. Unless such an analytic metaphysician shares the skeptical attitude and holds mainstream views.

References

  • Callender, C. (2011). Philosophy of science and metaphysics. In S. French & J. Saatsi (Eds.), The Continuum companion to the philosophy of science (pp. 33–53). London/New York: Continuum.

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  • Dorato, M. (2002). On becoming, cosmic time and rotating universes. In C. Callender (Ed.), Time, reality, and experience (pp. 253–276). Cambridge: CUP.

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  • Earman, J., Smeenk, C., & Wüthrich, C. (2009). Do the laws of physics forbid the operation of time machines? Synthese, 169, 91–124.

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  • Ladyman, J., & Ross, D. (2007). Every thing must go. Metaphysics naturalized. Oxford/New York: OUP.

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  • Maudlin, T. (2007). The metaphysics within physics. Oxford/New York: OUP.

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  1. Institut für Philosophie, Universität Bonn, 53113, Bonn, Germany

    Cord Friebe

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  1. Cord Friebe
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Friebe, C. Don Ross, James Ladyman, and Harold Kincaid (eds.): Scientific Metaphysics. J Gen Philos Sci 45, 387–391 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-014-9254-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-014-9254-8

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