Scientific Metaphysics

The book gathers original essays by leading philosophers on the question of whether, and how, metaphysics should be naturalized. Though naturalization has been used to mean a variety of different things, in this book it is generally taken to refer to the project of making metaphysics a part of natural science, motivated by the same aims and subject to the same demands as science. Of course, there is rich room for debate about just what these aims and demands are, and over whether any specific kind of metaphysics could achieve and satisfy them. The book includes a rich range of perspectives on these debates. (It does not aim to include voices defending traditional, non-naturalized metaphysics.) In the course of this, numerous related sub-topics are treated in detail. These include the general nature of reality according to physics, the relationships between physics and special sciences, the relationship between scientific and everyday ideas of mind, subjectivity and the kinds of things there are, and attitudes toward metaphysics among historical precursors of contemporary views, such as Kant, Quine, and Peirce. Contributors are Anjan Chakravartty, Daniel Dennett, Michael Friedman, Paul Humphreys, Jenann Ismael, Harold Kincaid, James Ladyman, Andrew Melnyk, Don Ross and Mark Wilson.