A Critique of 'The Criticisms against Metaphysics' (Perspective essay) (original) (raw)

Unjustified Criticism of Metaphysics

Lato Sensu, vol.2, No 1, 2015

At the same time as a purported renewal of metaphysics is taking place in analytical philosophy, criticism of metaphysics has also increased. Criticism of metaphysics is usually made by naturalistic metaphysicians and is aimed at non-naturalistic metaphysics. Without endorsing any of the above schools, in this essay I undertake, not a criticism of metaphysics, but a criticism of the current criticism of metaphysics. I therefore review some of the most important issues at stake in this criticism, which merely recycles centuries-old criticism of metaphysics in general: the alleged sterility and futility of metaphysics, its vagueness, the propensity for fantasy, the lack of imagination and foresight, its alleged dependence on intuition and, above all, its independence from experience. I conclude that all these criticisms supply an inaccurate image of metaphysics and a concomitant inaccurate image of science rooted in a refusal to recognize that a strict separation between a priori and a posteriori cannot be achieved.

Why Metaphysics? A Rather Ambitious Introduction

Neoaristotelian Perspectives in Metaphysics (Routledge), 2014

This volume re-examines some of the major themes at the intersection of traditional and contemporary metaphysics. The book uses as a point of departure Francisco Suárez’s Metaphysical Disputations published in 1597. Minimalist metaphysics in empiricist/pragmatist clothing have today become mainstream in analytic philosophy. Independently of this development, the progress of scholarship in ancient and medieval philosophy makes clear that traditional forms of metaphysics have affinities with some of the streams in contemporary analytic metaphysics. The book brings together leading contemporary metaphysicians to investigate the viability of a neo-Aristotelian metaphysics.

“The Death of Metaphysics” as Metametaphysics

Scientia - The International Journal on the Liberal Arts

Over the years, many philosophers have proclaimed the death of metaphysics, the death of that area of philosophy concerned with the study of reality as such. But what exactly do they mean by this? What does this death-of-metaphysics idea imply? In this paper, I offer a way to articulate this idea by formulating it as a metametaphysical thesis about the non-substantivity of metaphysical claims. I argue that given this formulation such a metametaphysical thesis seems implausible. References Balog, Katalin. “In Defense of the Phenomenal Concept Strategy.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 84, (2012): 1-23. Chalmers David, David Manley, and Ryan Wasserman, eds. Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundation of Ontology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Chalmers, David. “Verbal Disputes.” The Philosophical Review 120, (2011): 475–513. Chalmers, David. “Ontological Anti-Realism,” in Metametaphysics, 2009, 77-129. Hirsch, Eli. “Quantifier Variance and Realism.” Philosophical Is...

The Value of Metaphysics in the "Post-Metaphysical" Era

International Journal of Humanitatis Theoreticus., 2020

Ever since Hume launched a book-burning campaign against metaphysics, and Kant declared the "end of metaphysics", supported by the Law of Three Stages of Comte and the rejection of metaphysics by the Logical Positivists, we are seen to be living in a post metaphysical era. This paper situates the historical roots of the rejection of metaphysics and then argues forcefully that metaphysics is indispensably relevant in our era. We may theoretically be living after the era of metaphysics, but in practice, in all academic and scientific endeavors, we cannot do without metaphysical presuppositions and assumptions. Those proclaiming the death of metaphysics are in fact valorizing metaphysics since at the base of their arguments are metaphysical principles.

Metaphysics after the Critique of Metaphysics

Religion and the Arts, 2023

In his monumental and informative work, Incomprehensible Certainty, Thomas Pfau starts with a question taken from Dostoevsky’s The Idiot: “Can something that has no image come as an image?” This important question also applies well to Giorgio Agamben’s and Niklaus Largier’s works, since all three works share a common interest in the challenges of metaphysics: the unspeakable in Largier, Being (to on), or “The One” in Pfau, and the relation between being and language, or being and thinking in Agamben. Full article here: https://brill.com/view/journals/rart/27/1-2/rart.27.issue-1-2.xml

A Metaphysician's User Guide: The Epistemology of Metaphysics

In this dissertation, I focus primarily on the justification for beliefs in the sorts of propositions that are the focus of scrutiny and debate in contemporary analytic metaphysics. I develop a theory of justification that revolves around the explanatory fit between a metaphysical theory and its evidence. I go on to defend the view that beliefs in contemporary analytic metaphysics are justified against skeptics, many of whom identify with the logical empiricist tradition. Finally, I offer some suggestions as to how metaphysics as a discipline can progress by examining the methodology of metaphysics and arguing how empirical work can potentially move metaphysics forward.

THE SEPARABILITY OR INSEPARABILITY OF METAPHYSICS FROM MODERN SCIENCE

Issoufou Soulé Mouchili Njimom, Ed., “SCIENCE ET POLITIQUE Réflexions sur des fondements de la dynamique culturelle contemporaine”, 2020

Central to this chapter is a basic philosophical concept of the nature of modern science which exists amongst positivists, like Auguste Comte, who rejects as illegitimate all that cannot be directly observed in the investigation and study of any subject. Our daily experience of the nature of science continues to give us reasons to unlearn what can be considered as prejudices and errors in our conception of the nature of science. Consequently, the question "what is the nature of modern science?" still perplexes us, and the answers we provide to this question often reveal how distorted our vision of history and thought has become over the years. This chapter shall, via the method of critical analysis in philosophy pass through Comte's three stages of arriving at the truth. This approach rejects as non-scientific all that cannot be directly observed in the investigation and study of any subject against Whitehead's approach in which he tries to make a “dispassionate consideration of the nature of things, antecedently to any special investigation into their details”. This is a standpoint Whitehead terms “metaphysical.” This explains why he developed a comprehensive metaphysical system for the understanding of science, society, and self as found in his major texts. In this light, science cannot be done without taking metaphysics into account.