Arroyo, Raoni (2023) Making New Tools From the Toolbox of Metaphysics. Erkenntnis, 88. pp. 2251-2257. ISSN 0165-0106
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Abstract
In this review, I specify the metametaphysical background against which Alastair Wilson’s “The Nature of Contingency” (Oxford University Press, 2020) should be properly understood. Metaphysics, as a philosophical discipline, is standing on thin ice. The caricature of the situation is polarized, and is often presented as follows: metaphysics is either entirely extracted from science or it is entirely independent of science. There is a recent trend that focuses on the middle ground between these extremes, searching the philosophical literature for metaphysical theories that can fill the gap, i.e., leaving metaphysics as a free discipline to produce spoils for the eventual needs of philosophers of science. We can appreciate it better with the following distinction between the tasks of ontology and metaphysics, as complementary disciplines. If, on the one hand, we understand ontology as dealing with what exists, we can somehow extract the entities that are existentially postulated by scientific theories. Metaphysics, on the other hand, would be located as an extra layer, in charge of investigating questions about the nature of the entities obtained in this “naturalized ontology”. As a tailor, Wilson adjusts a metaphysical theory in order to perfectly dress the physical and ontological nuances of Everettian quantum mechanics, thus creating a metaphysical theory that gives us intelligibility, with the concept of modality, in two areas: in quantum mechanics, and analytic metaphysics.
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| Item Type: | Published Article or Volume | ||||||
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| Subjects: | General Issues > Scientific Metaphysics Specific Sciences > Physics > Quantum Mechanics General Issues > Realism/Anti-realism |
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| Depositing User: | Dr. Raoni Arroyo | ||||||
| Date Deposited: | 22 May 2025 12:36 | ||||||
| Last Modified: | 22 May 2025 12:36 | ||||||
| Item ID: | 25401 | ||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Erkenntnis | ||||||
| Publisher: | Springer (Springer Science+Business Media B.V.) | ||||||
| Official URL: | https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10670-0... | ||||||
| DOI or Unique Handle: | 10.1007/s10670-021-00444-3 | ||||||
| Subjects: | General Issues > Scientific Metaphysics Specific Sciences > Physics > Quantum Mechanics General Issues > Realism/Anti-realism |
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| Date: | 2023 | ||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 2251-2257 | ||||||
| Volume: | 88 | ||||||
| ISSN: | 0165-0106 | ||||||
| URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/25401 |
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Making New Tools From the Toolbox of Metaphysics. (deposited 02 Dec 2023 03:35)
- Making New Tools From the Toolbox of Metaphysics. (deposited 22 May 2025 12:36) [Currently Displayed]
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