Metaphysics as Essentially Imaginative and Aiming at Understanding

American Philosophical Quarterly 60 (1):83-97 (2023)
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Abstract

I explore the view that metaphysics is essentially imaginative. I argue that the central goal of metaphysics on this view is understanding, not truth. Metaphysics-as-essentially-imaginative provides novel answers to challenges to both the value and epistemic status of metaphysics.

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Michaela McSweeney
Boston University

Citations of this work

Why Mary left her room.Michaela M. McSweeney - 2023 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 109 (1):261-287.
Understanding in Science and Philosophy.Michaela McSweeney - forthcoming - In Sanford C. Goldberg & Mark Walker, Attitude in Philosophy. Oxford University Press.
Viewpoint Convergence as a Philosophical Defect.Grace Helton - forthcoming - In Sanford C. Goldberg & Mark Walker, Attitude in Philosophy. Oxford University Press.

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References found in this work

Writing the Book of the World.Theodore Sider - 2011 - Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Two Dogmas of Empiricism.Willard V. O. Quine - 1951 - Philosophical Review 60 (1):20–43.
Every thing must go: metaphysics naturalized.James Ladyman & Don Ross - 2007 - New York: Oxford University Press. Edited by Don Ross, David Spurrett & John G. Collier.
On the Plurality of Worlds.David Lewis - 1986 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 178 (3):388-390.
Two Dogmas of Empiricism.W. V. O. Quine - 2011 - In Robert B. Talisse & Scott F. Aikin, The Pragmatism Reader: From Peirce Through the Present. Princeton University Press. pp. 202-220.

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