Society for the Metaphysics of Science

OVERVIEW
The Society for the Metaphysics of Science is a newly formed group that seeks to promote work in the ‘metaphysics of science’, one of the most exciting new areas of professional philosophical research (see below for more on the area and some of the issues we are interested in). We welcome new members!

Initially, the Society intends to operate through annual sessions of papers, on a variety of topics, on the group programs at both the Central and Pacific meetings of the APA. For more information about the Society, including its goals, events and structure, please explore the information below and in the links provided.

JOINING THE SOCIETY
To be added to the Society’s email list about our events, and future initiatives, please email carl.gillett@gmail.com or ken.aizawa@gmail.com. Alternatively, visit our informational blog here.

GOALS OF THE SOCIETY
Amongst the main goals of the Society are the following:

• To stimulate and generally promote discussion and research in the metaphysics of science;

• To engage researchers working on connected topics in related areas, whether in the sciences, social sciences, humanities, theology, etc.

• To foster a constructive dialogue with writers in contrasting traditions, such as analytic metaphysics, feminist philosophy of science and epistemology, experimental philosophy, general philosophy of science, the philosophy of particular sciences (e.g., biological, cognitive, social), and others.

WHAT IS THE ‘METAPHYSICS OF SCIENCE’?
With the rise of philosophical ‘naturalism’, scientific evidence plays a key role in many philosophical debates – not just in the philosophy of science and its various areas, but also in philosophy of mind, metaphysics and beyond. Consequently, a key area of inquiry for naturalistic philosophers is a form of ‘metaphysics’ in what has recently been dubbed the ‘metaphysics of science’: the abstract examination of ontological issues as they arise within, or growing out of, the sciences and their findings, concepts, models, theories etc.

Though we conceive of the metaphysics of science in a broad manner, it nonetheless contrasts, in both its object phenomena and methodology, with other forms ‘metaphysics’ has recently taken. In the twentieth century, ‘metaphysics’ became a dirty word after it was associated with the largely transcendental and a aprioristic approaches of Kantians and Hegelians which were assailed by the Positivists, Wittgensteinians, ordinary language philosophers and others. The metaphysics of science is neither transcendental nor a aprioristic since it takes it foundation in the sciences, and it thus also contrasts with much recent analytic metaphysics, though it overlaps with some.

WHAT ISSUES ARISE IN THE METAPHYSICS OF SCIENCES?
There are a very broad and exciting range of issues that arise in the metaphysics of science, including the following illustrative, and by no means exhaustive, list (where many issues recur in various areas):

General Philosophy of Science: Debates over reduction, emergence, levels, multiple or univocal realization, identity theories, higher level causation, and the nature of so-called ‘special sciences’; questions over the nature of scientific properties, individuals and processes and their ‘essences’ or individuation; the nature of mechanistic and functional explanation; the character of laws generally and specifically, for example ceteris paribus laws, special science laws etc.; the character of compositional relations between entities posited in the sciences, for example the realization of properties, constitution of individuals, and implementation of processes; evidence for physicalism vs dualism, vitalism and other alternatives; the formulation of physicalism and the definition of the ‘physical’.

Philosophy of Biology: the levels of selection; biological causation; concepts of the gene and genetic reductionism; the nature of biological entities; natural kinds in biology; biological functions; modeling techniques across the biological sciences; species and systematics; the homology concept; evo-devo and its implications; pluralism and realism.

Philosophy of Psychology: The nature of sensation, color, perception, emotion, language, cognition, mental causation, multiple or univocal realization, identity theories and materialism/physicalism; the problem of intentionality; consciousness and its place in nature; functionalism and functional explanation; the extended mind; the embodied mind, psychological universalism; models of rationality; evolutionary psychology; the existence and nature of innate knowledge; the modularity hypotheses; the existence, nature, and structure of mental representations; free will; eliminativism, intentional realism, the ‘intentional stance’, and alternative views of the psychological.

Philosophy of Neuroscience: The nature and status of levels, mechanisms, (ceteris paribus) laws, realization and identity in the neurosciences; principles about, and localization of, function and individuation generally; the material correlates of consciousness; neuroscientific findings and free-will.

Philosophy of Social Science: The nature of ‘kinds’ generally, and whether there are ‘kinds’ in the social sciences and how they differ, if at all, from kinds in other areas; issues over specific ‘kinds’, for example is ‘race’ a kind and of what variety; methodological individualism; experimental economics and game theory; philosophy of culture.

Extending work on such issues also either grounds or informs answers to central questions in ‘core’ areas of traditional philosophy. To take but two areas as examples, relevant questions include (where again many issues appear in both areas):

Philosophy of Mind: The mind-body problem (i.e. the mind-body relation); the ‘Problem of Mental Causation’; the various ‘problems of consciousness’, hard or soft; ‘individualism’ versus ‘anti-individualism’, ‘internalism’ versus ‘externalism’, and, more recently, debates over the ‘extended mind’; cognitive architecture; the nature of mental content and concepts; the character and status of nativism; reductive versus anti-reductionist views of the mental; eliminativism; the ‘intentional stance’ and its implications.

Metaphysics: Debates over the nature of persons and personal identity, including the relations of psychological systems and states, animals, bodies, brains etc.; the possibility and character of free-will; the nature of ‘parts’ and ‘wholes’, and ‘constitution’ or ‘composition’ generally, in naturalistic philosophy; the existence of ‘fundamental’ entities or ‘simples’; the character and status of ‘physicalism’ versus alternatives; the formulation of physicalism and the definition of the ‘physical’.

Last updated: September 24, 2007